August 19 2013
Siena, Italy

Everything is arranged. Tomorrow we’ll go to the sea.
Roberto and Leo will roll up their sleeves and remove my heart.

It won’t hurt. Nothing hurts in Tuscany.

We sip Grappa by unpaid bills. Everything here is too beautiful.
The sky is a painting. Fat candy tomatoes heave on the vine.

My new life has no edges.

When I listen out for voices in the night I can only hear the wind inside my bones.
Everything is moving from the city and landing in the Tuscan countryside.

I flick between love on TV. Sometimes love looks like us and sometimes the actors are too old or too young. I’m trying to map out the wound. Mum said it’s the most beautiful place for a wound and she’s right.

What a beautiful place to be left behind.
What a long way to come to be cut into pieces.

Mum said true strength comes from the heart and that’s where I have to keep reaching from.

I walk the little streets of Cortona with a friend, the tables by the church are full of well-dressed families drinking wine and laughing with their mouths heavenward. I get the contract of it all, how important it is to make the picture for each other. We have to see the happiness of someone else that we’re desperate to feel for ourselves.

Cortona is a painting. I’m swimming through a painting, reaching from the heart.