Florence
I was still in Florence. I was bathing in memory and wasn't going to leave this warm home without being forced to.
In the old days I used to allow myself a Baci chocolate with every espresso. The chocolate with a hazelnut and a little saying about love. I would conscientiously write down every saying in my diary. I remember three of them:
Love and reason are sworn enemies.
For an instant, our lives met, our souls flowered.
Love has no age, it is forever being born.
To look at them as mere words, or to live them, that was the question in those days. And when I lived them, disappointments were inevitable.
One unhappy evening I pushed a Baci chocolate, in an envelope, through the slot in Patricia's letter-box. I imagined how the hazelnut and the little saying were being crushed. The way Patricia had crushed up our encounter.
