#slightly emo

But maybe to be loved and known, first you need to be devoured...

🌠- A time they wished upon a falling star

Seven-year-old Paola Damasco is all angles and bone. Sheunderstands why the nuns do not dote on her her, why the patrons of theorphanage see only a shadow in her place instead of a little girl hoping to beseen. Hugging me hurts, she remindsherself to dim the sting of being overlooked, I’m too boney.

Seven-year-old Paola Damasco tries not to want it, but shecan’t help the way her eyes keep coming back to the same scene to her left: a youngcouple speaking to adorably chubby, five-year-old Sofia who smiles with everyinhale and laughs with every exhale. They are already in love, she can see it.Their eyes are brimming with it, and their hope reeks of everything Paola is afraid to want.

She slips away, quietly and away from the red eyes of the orphanswho grow hateful from years of wanting and never receiving. She’s done finewithout a family – and if wanting one with all of her heart will turn her intoa bully, she will not want one. She is Paola Damasco, with only a name toreflect her origins. (Even this is a blessing – she is one of the few orphanswith a name given to her by her own parents and not the nuns. It was scrawledcarelessly on a piece of paper, and perhaps it meant nothing to them – but inan orphanage, every scrap is a feast.)

But that night, a star falls and the children of the orphanagecrowd the window in search of more. And as they all watch the sky with eyeswide open, Paola squeezes hers shut and screams from her heart, Please give me a home.

Eighteen-year-old Paola Damasco is all determination and hope.Her eyes are clear and dry as she says goodbye to the orphanage that raised herand the nuns who tried to love her into a saint. And perhaps she is one oftheir few successes – her first attempt to secure a job is met with a darksmile and a filthy, lucrative proposition. The emptiness of her pockets weighheavy on her thoughts and the stacks of cash he presents glitters like gold, butstill she refuses.

Eighteen-year-old Paola Damasco cannot be bought. She willnot let Rome purchase her soul.

She is met with similar offers all through the day, and eachrefusal becomes harder than the last. The sky is dark and the streets aregrowing crowded with demons and devils – and Paola has no place to stay.

Paola doesn’t sleep that night. She stays awake, hunched ina quiet and forgotten corner by a bookstore with a stolen blanket around hershoulders. She watches for threatening strangers, but mostly, she watches thestars. And when a shooting star comes into view, Paola smiles and wishesgently, Please give me a home.

Twenty six-year-old Paola Damasco is on a mission. The moneyshe’s saved – for a quiet cottage in a forest, for food and treats for an olddog to lay at her feet, for a delicate and modest ring to rest on her finger –is depleted by almost two-thirds for a car she doesn’t know how to drive.

It doesn’t matter. Paola gets behind the wheel and learnsbecause she must.

She parks to sleep in her car before continuing the journeyat sunrise, and as she lowers the seat to lay flat, Paola notices a shootingstar in the sky.

Quietly, Paola sighs. What does she have left to wish for?What can she possibly want?