It was X’s birthday
And I was hurting.
Dear morning spit spitter
I see you, and your blue eyes
A freezing burn
Scalding of the skin.
Spit spit spitter
Better a slap or a kick
Than the spit
That flew out of your face and down
My neck
Hot spit like spice
Crashing in between my cosmic tits and beyond –
In a space which was never yours
and never will be.
Spitter,
I imagine the taste of your mouth as a day’s first breath,
Slow and hungover –
I felt you like headache in its first inception
a throbbing thrust of pain in a temple and the half shutting of an eye-lid
A need for darkness.
Would it had made a difference,
If you’d known it was X’s birthday
And I was hurting?
Morning spit spitter!
You might find this hard to believe
But there was a time when
I did not scream enough
Especially in anger.
Thank you.
You forced me to feel
The violence of a simple liquid gesture
And its power to engrave railroads on the skin
And burn burn burn
E bruciare bruciare bruciare.
Moist contempt – I would have found more sense
in a punch and blood –
Instead, your spit declared
I was not even worth your hands
Or the tension of a muscle.
And to make things worse, it was X’s birthday!
Our love had ended with a text from her phone
So not only I was fucking hurting, I was raging!
So of course
With your spit dancing on my cheek, still
I shoved your body in the street
Forcing the screeching of cars and
Children in backseats.
At this point
The rest of the world had started admitting the scene
Bursting windows and doors open
Interrupting phone calls and greetings
To watch us, and more it seemed, ME,
And my next move towards you
The morning spit spitter.
I stepped on the road
An Italian stereotype of screams
“Oh stronzo! Vieni qua pezzo di merda che adesso ti ammazzo!”
The laughter of your reply
Crawled out your mouth and up my spine
Choking my neck in surprise.
I raised an arm –
So there I was, fist and rage hovering in mid air
Traffic at a halt
And my sister, voiceless and on the pavement.
Then you, morning spit spitter
Had to open your bottle of Oasis, which I hate, and fling it at my face!
You left me dripping wet and sticky
Your red Oasis a blanket of inflammation
For pain and humiliation –
Forget oasis I became a desert
Scalding
Visceral
And prone to storms.
Happy Birthday X.
To think that only one month before
you had confessed
An obsession with my hands
And there I was, head spinning from a stranger’s spit,from the sugar nausea of Oasis and from your absence.
You ran then, spitter,
Screaming all of your hate towards me, the Italian woman, the Italian bitch
Working the job that was your right
Your place
Your inheritance in this island
Where buses apologize more than people
And eyes look down in silence.
Eventually, you also left my mind.
your spit dried
And solidified the fibres of my chest, neck and cheek.
New mouths and lips traced the outlines of your spitty streaks
And each morning felt a little less like X’s birthday.
I am no longer hurting.
