Last Disguise

It rained all night. Not a decent, head-on rain, but a kind of damp breathing that seeped through the cracks in the balcony and got into my bones. The stone is still dripping. And me, sleepless, without remorse, just that quiet restlessness of someone who doesn't know if they survived the night or simply didn't die enough. Yesterday, at the table, the silence was thicker than the wine. Francesca spoke little. Her eyes, always a bit clouded, searched for something in me as if looking for a flaw, a tremor, or an answer I never promised to give. She told me she'd be back today. Or maybe she didn't say anything. I can't tell anymore what was said from what I wish had been said. Mariangela didn't show up. Not a message. Not even an explicit absence. Just her emptiness—always punctual, almost elegant. Her absence has a scent. A dry perfume, with notes of irony and basil—a trail that backs me into what I never knew how to be. I left before dawn. Took the brown jacket, the one for cold nights in Ferrara, the one she once tore off me in the hallway of a nameless hotel. It was hot, but I needed it. As if the fabric knew things the skin has already forgotten.