azíz

How could I tell you what Rome is like without telling you who I am? How can I lead a story of you? How can I know your other memories—those of your parents and your own ancestors—other than to know me? How can we both try to tell each other about the necessary and natural coincidence of being? I saw I was here. I told myself so. And that my own call was to be inscribed in each other. We, fellow travelers, met, and after that, we were lost. I brought my own share of words and my own language and the music of my thoughts, and I wrote the bloody damn book that is here. I sat by the Equus and soaked up the fire I had missed for a year in another city.

It is unlikely I will ever see Rome again, a fact that barely diminishes my desire to be back. All the words of all the dead who have crossed my path out of my memory wait for me somewhere in the ruins of Rome, patiently waiting for a restful quiet. It is entirely possible that I will finish this book in its real city, yet, while I have you in my mind’s eye, I can’t help but wish that our two cities would combine. I still call

It is unlikely I will ever see Rome again, a fact that barely diminishes my desire to be back. All the words of all the dead who have crossed my path out of my memory wait for me somewhere in the ruins of Rome, patiently waiting for a restful quiet. It is entirely possible that I will finish this book in its real city, yet, while I have you in my mind’s eye, I can’t help but wish that our two cities would combine. I still call Rome home. I still have a job there. My life and my spirit feel unsummed and eager for the next thing. I want a large blunt shape, and bloody veins beneath it, that the words here may in some way actually touch it. I want there to be enough exposure to the light of Rome to become Roman like the city. 

I want to see the Queen of Night when you and I enter a godless café on some sweaty Roman night. I want you to hold my hand and our voices to say, “The writer seems to be looking for something. Does the outline of Rome occupy his eye?” I want to hold you and this summer be in and out of Rome and have long words still to say to you. I want Rome and New York to become one. I want you to find the tragedy in my haphazard, continuing effort to scrape my heart from the street and return it to my former self.  I’m sorry.