Melissa P.
The Scent of Your Breath
To Thomas, who knows how to sniff my skirt,
to my mother the forest,
to my sister the storm,
to my Nonna Madonna.
So go, take the train ’cause if you don’t go now, you surely will
One
I threw myself into the streets of the world with a bee in my hair. A bee that buzzed among my tresses, beat its wings convulsively, and buzzed, buzzed, buzzed. I didn’t brush it away, I let it build its hive in my head, and everyone who met me said, “You’ve got hair like honey,” and didn’t know that there was a bee in my head, rolling around playfully among my thoughts with its soft, bicolored body. And it kept me company, my bee did; it became an indispensable if not very trustworthy companion: sometimes it gave me little bites on the back of my neck that should have hurt. But my bee was too small to hurt me; it left honey in me but never poison.
One day the bee whispered something in my ear, but it was too faint a murmur for me to hear. I never asked what it had tried to say to me and now it’s too late. My bee flew away from my hair, all of a sudden, and a passerby killed it. It was squashed. On the white marble I can see a liquid gleaming, a substance: I pick it up with a little spatula and take it to an analytic laboratory.
“Poison,” the biologist tells me.
“Poison…,” I repeat.
My bee died of poisoning; it wasn’t squashed. A few hours before, it had bitten me.
Who’s going to keep my silences company? I miss the bee’s buzzing; I need its soft whisper. When the morning sun shines, I find my teeth clenched and a sound coming from my mouth:
Two
Were you OK yesterday? When you got home and lit yourself a cigarette from the gas ring in the kitchen, when our cat rubbed against your neck, breath quivering, when you shut your eyes and folded your legs like a fetus, what did you think about? Were you OK?
My torments began when I said good-bye to you at the airport, when I came over and said, “So, did you get all that? You check in, go up those escalators and then through the metal detector,” and I pointed to it with a finger, “after which you go toward the gate marked on your boarding card, and you’re there. Call me when you get home.”
That’s what I said to you, and then I moved away, came back, and repeated it all word for word. I even repeated my gesture, pointing to the metal detector.
Finally I kissed you softly, our bodies apart, and whispered in your ear: “Thank you.”
You, in a voice less harsh than mine, replied, “Thank
That same evening I made love with Thomas. “Let’s do it as though it’s the last time,” I said to him, looking him straight in the eyes.
He hesitated for a moment, then asked, “What do you mean?”
“Don’t be stupid…nothing apocalyptic. Just an excess of love.”
“Why?” he asked, dumbfounded.
I shrugged. “Because I’ve had enough of giving myself away piecemeal. I need to stretch to infinity.”
“But you always do that,” he said.
I shrugged again and snorted.
No, I’ve never stretched to infinity. I don’t know infinity. What I know is boundaries, paralysis, impairment. But not infinity.
“Let’s do it this way. Imagine one of us dies tomorrow; imagine that one of us has to go traveling for years and years and then we had to see each other again after a long time…or maybe never see each other again. How would you love me, how far would you go?”
He was extremely handsome, I was extremely beautiful. We were warmed by the light from the lamp on the chest of drawers, which bathed our faces with specks of color.
When we made love he didn’t exist, but he did exist and so did you. I existed, just an apparition. You and he loved me, tore me apart and kissed me. I saw your nose, his mouth, your ears, and his eyes. I felt two hearts beating rather than one, and when my body surged I shouted, “I love you so, so much,” and I was saying it to you as well.
You and he, guardians of my soul and my body. Presumptuously appearing on the terrace of my life, you watch and protect it as I have not asked you to, as I do not expect you to.
His sweat smelled like your neck, and his neck smelled of you. Then it was over. My eyelids lowered like the curtain after a show, and my soft, gratified breath merged with the smells of the room. And you stayed.
You’ve never made an attempt on my life or my liberty. You’re so frail, and I’m too heavy. Now and again I’ll have to silence all my theories of life to give more room to that extreme but gentle feeling I have for you.
Maybe you deserve that.
“A one-way ticket for Rome,” I said.
The man at the travel agency looked at me and smiled. “Where are you off to this time?”
I looked at him for a moment, tracing every feature of his face inside my head.
“Home,” I replied.
He lowered his head as a sign of reverence and, looking up at me furtively, said, “Straightaway.”
As he clicked away at the keys of his computer, I studied the brochures behind me. From the Congo to Laos, I could have gone anywhere. From Paris to Hokkaido. From Valparaiso to Athens. Endless possibilities spread out behind me, with many promises and few demands. I could have begun my escape right then, since I was there. But I was scared of the lack of responsibility; it’s always frightened me.
“So you’ve decided on Rome?” the man asked.
I turned around and nodded with a smile.
“Do you want me to make you an electronic ticket?”
“No, please don’t. I’d like to be able to hold it in my hand.”
It was like suddenly turning in to the road I’ve seen so many times on the horizon from my street, the one I’ve been traveling down for such a short time, but I feel as though I’ve lived a hundred years already, half of those years spent well, the other half so-so, to put it optimistically.
It’s always struck me as impossible to reach the point where the two roads cross, so that I’ve indolently traveled the whole journey without wondering where it would take me and what I would do when I got there.
All of a sudden I’ve found myself at the entrance to that unknown street, which a gilded sign identifies as
