Layers

We darted in and out of the winding corridors,
cobblestones under our feet.

Yellow of lemons battles the yellow of sunshine
that fights its way through lush green cocoons.

Leather sandals, thin enough for my blood to glide over generations past, as I stub my foot more times than I can keep track of.

Tourists never understand: the true backdrop is in fact not the multicolored dwellings

that hug the Tyrrhenian Sea
made famous in photos—

but rather the climate,
which cannot be captured on film.

The summer heat is dry yet damp, and all-consuming.

Sweat pooling at the nape of my lower back.

My body always begging for an Italian of every variety.
Even old men hold an odd attraction,
and I let my mind play with the idea of being bedded by a tall, tanned man with white hair.
My hands entertain how it might feel to get lost—and found—

before I’m pulled back to the thickness of citrus in the air, a slight bergamot essence teasing my tongue

After all,

it is the mission of the moment
to find the decadence of lemon cream
that only comes from a place like this.

I always smell of sex here.

Men fall into my arms, and I secretly love it.
She hates it.

Her lips say “I love you,” yet her eyes speak a language only souls understand. She fails to realize I am fluent in this foreign tongue.

“One Delizia al limone for two people,” in my perfect Italian.
She looks at me with an ever-complimentary smile—
it's hard to make out the gleam of the knife in her teeth.

It was the last meal we shared before the chapter of us was closed and drowned in the very sea we sat admiring that morning over silky full-fat cappuccinos.

I felt the end while our spoons scraped through the layers of decadence, a familiar mirror of these friendship layers

Thick.
Gluttonous.
Sweet.
Rich.

But will make you fat if devoured too many times.