Artemisia Gentileschi, girlhood, lost friends
The looking that feels best is between the two girls. When we want to look at something else we pilgrimage to "Judith Beheading Holofernes."
for M.Q.
2002
Neither of us has a cellphone, so we make plans and promises we only intend to keep. Meet at the Irish pub, meet at the Piazza Libertà, or skip meeting and never leave each other’s side. She wears a leopard miniskirt, green hair, a messenger bag. I wear sailor jeans and flats that crack in half from walking the uneven streets. We walk with our arms encircling each other, a dubious effort, in part, to deter solicitous comments from men. This gesture has the opposite effect, but we feel mutually protective and claimed, each of us knight and maiden.
We are homesick for the Midwest and spicy food. We should subsist on borlotti bean soup and plates of pasta. Instead we eat falafel and Chinese food and, on the hot stone steps outside the market, hunks of pecorino fresco, bread, and sliced tomato. Mostly we drink, not beer, which we can’t afford, but coffee. Due cappuccini, we say, once, if not twice a day. We cannot figure out how to ask for our drinks to go. Where we are so desperate to escape to, I don’t know. Some part of us must wants only what the culture patently denies. Then one day it works: a woman pours our drinks into thin plastic dentist cups, and covers each with a paper napkin, twisting the ends. We sit triumphant in the park with our tiny coffees, we smoke and talk. We are still girls, in love like Anne and Diana. We are in love with each other and a shared dream, so dearly held, we can scarcely speak it aloud: We want to be writers.
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