Sveva

She had lowered her gaze.

Her hair 

slid gently over her shoulders.

It brushed her arm, got lost for a moment, 

then swayed and stopped with her

watching that long and silent void.

Sveva looked straight ahead.

Even the sea was still

So she remained immersed in that silence

dark and serene

before returning home.

The road was not far, and as she pedaled, she felt the night flowing around her. The sound of tires on the asphalt.

The many fears that mingled in that brief journey

and washed over her.

The fear that nothing would be enough for her, or that she would never be enough for what she wanted.

Her mother waited for her, awake every evening. She slept on the sofa, under a blanket, with her phone in her hand. When Sveva got home, she moved quietly, went to the sofa, and paused the episode of the series her mother was watching.

She took the headphones out of her ears and woke her up to tell her she could go to sleep.

At her age, maybe it was strange to live with her parents. Or maybe it wasn't. Many of her friends were still at home. Many of them had given up the idea that there was a life outside their rooms.

She walked through the dark house and went to the bathroom. She couldn't take a shower, it was too late. Her head was spinning. She remembered she had to put her phone on charge. Right, but where was the charger?

In the bedroom. It wasn't in the bedroom.

She had returned to the living room. She looked around. She searched among some books on the coffee table in front of the sofa.

Nothing.

But her mother had heard her from afar.

“If you’re looking for something to eat, it’s in the kitchen. I’ve prepared something for you on the table. Eat before you sleep. Look, with all this cycling you do every day, you’re getting thinner.” Silence.

“Honey, then go to sleep…”

In the silence of the empty kitchen, she had replayed the previous evening. The sound of the bolt as she had chained her bicycle behind the low wall. Samira passing by her to enter. They had never become friends. They had had a drink after work, but without saying much.

She knew she had a son

or maybe a daughter.

Together they worked well. Neither of them had any intention of being a waitress forever. In the various restaurants in the area where they had worked, the pay was always low and sometimes completely undeclared. Often they were paid per service or hired with seasonal contracts. Short-term jobs, paid as little as possible.

In the previous restaurant, when Sveva had asked what she should do if she got sick, the owner had replied that she worked part-time.

She had the other half of the day to stay in bed and vomit.

The girls who worked in the dining room had to be careful of the customers, those who worked in the kitchen of their colleagues. One of her friends was the only cook in her restaurant and spent the evening listening to obscene jokes while she worked.

By now they were background noise, like pots clanging on stoves or oven doors, but they were continuous, oppressive.

They were a slow poison that, over time, extinguished her drop by drop.

No malice.

Nothing personal.

They’re just jokes.

You know how we are.

A list of phrases and glances placed along the counter,

like the cut vegetables on the line for the evening service.

Then she got up. She left everything where it was and went to her room. Two thirty-seven. She had answered a few messages. How many would be pissed off by those messages? How many were still awake?

Maybe she was the only one who had forgotten that every day began with a sunrise.

V RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Silence.

V RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Silence.

Sveva opened her eyes. She didn't move immediately.

Like almost every day, she woke up with Zelda lying on her head and backaches.

The cat stared at her with one eye open. She was probably wondering if she could sleep or if she should wait for Sveva to decide what to do. Being woken up multiple times was something that bothered her a lot. Every time she had to stretch, turn over, and find a new position.

Sveva had reached her hand out of bed. On the floor, her phone was charging. When she forgot to turn off the vibration and a message arrived, the tile near the bed vibrated too. She had unlocked the screen in the dimly lit room.

She didn't hear any noise outside the door.

Telegram.

Who is it at this hour… I was sleeping…

Fede “Awake?” 8:43

Damn. It was Fede.

Sveva “I was sleeping...” 8:52

Sveva “Yesterday I finished work late…” 9:10

Sveva “I saw the photos you posted of the party on IG… nice… but who were you with?”

9:10

Sveva “(Cool guy…) Who was it? Matti’s brother?”

9:10

Fede “Damn… were you still in bed? Don’t your parents give you hell for sleeping all day?”

9:10

Sveva “Why don’t you mind your own business? 🙂” 9:10

Fede "Yeah, the guy is super cool… but that's not why I wrote to you… I’ll tell you later… damn, not everyone sleeps all day like you… 😂” 9:10

Sveva “Okay…. so? 😂” 9:10

Sveva had waited for a while, sitting on the bed, to see if a reply would come.

Then she got up. Fede was one of her best friends.

Years earlier, she was one of the many who had decided to leave. She had managed to find a job in Milan.

She lived with other girls in a rather old house far from the center. She had never gone to visit her, and Fede complained to her every time. They saw each other when she came down for Christmas and in the summer.

Sveva “Come onnnnnnnn…. Get it togetherrrrrrrr…” 12:34

Fede “Don’t bother me, I found a solution for you… I’ll send you a voice message later… damn, not everyone sleeps all day like you… 😂” 12:35

Fede was unbearable. Even before leaving for Milan. Now she was a designer in a studio and had become really unbearable.

In the afternoon, Fede’s voice message arrived.

“Oooohhhh… Sorry about earlier, but I was with a friend I go out with in the evenings who was really upset…” In voice messages, Fede spoke without following a logical thread.

Minutes spent listening to complaints and stories of people Sveva didn't know.

“Anyway… I’m thinking of moving closer to the new office I’m in now… And the room would be free… The price is really low and the girls are really super chill… More or less…”.

“You told me you wanted to come to Milan and find something to turn your situation around because you’re about to shoot yourself at home…” Those weren't exactly the words Sveva had used, but Fede was very good at interpreting in her own way… “If you’re interested… Let me know so I can at least tell the girls to get in touch with you… You just have to hurry… Otherwise, they already have another friend who would take the room…”.

A few evenings later, they saw each other on Meet. Fede was sitting on her bed.

“Hi Fe… How are you doing?”

“Bad Sve… Shitty day… But don’t make me anxious talking about today… come on, I have to go out later…”

Fede looked around. There must have been two or three other girls in the room with her.

“Fe… I’ll even take the room, but I need to figure out how to pay for it… In the last few months, I’ve been constantly on LinkedIn looking through ads, but nothing…” Her home connection was terrible. Fede probably hadn’t heard anything.

But Sveva knew her. She knew what she complained about. “Sve, I know you could have avoided your degree… at least you would have saved yourself the tears because you broke up with Andre…”

The bitch laughs.

Exactly. She hadn’t even heard her, but she knew exactly where to hit.

Sveva had a degree from the Academy of Fine Arts of Macerata. Applied Arts. Illustration and Comics.

“Sve, did you ever apply your art?” Sveva always joked with Fede about the many shitty choices she had made.

She only pretended to take offense… “Fuck off…” They had laughed, lost among the noise of the girls in Fede’s room.

“No… listen, bitch… I told you… full of shitty people… then you know I preferred to go home…”

Sveva had looked away from the screen. Stopped smiling for an instant. She had lost herself in her thoughts.

Fede had noticed it and had said to her: “For work, I have several friends here who work in studios. I could ask. I’ll find you a job. I’ll ask about part-time. Working eight hours, you’d die… you can’t do it…”

“Thanks Fe… Definitely part-time because if I come up, I’ll enroll in IED, as I told you… this time I’d like to try Interaction Design… three years and it should look better on my resume than Illustration and Comics…”

Fede never missed an opportunity for a: “Damn, haven’t you taken that off your resume yet?” They had laughed.

“Anyway Sve… I have to go now… send me a resume without the degree, it doesn’t look good, and tell me when you arrive so I can set things up for you…”

Sveva remained still for a moment. She was really doing it. “Thanks Fe.”

“Sve, if I don’t help you, you’re screwed, you know…” They had laughed again, as the call faded.

Three years later, Sveva still thought about that call.

Fede was right, without her, her help, she wouldn't have left.

They had been difficult years. Milan had challenged her every day. But she had learned to

She had stopped and smiled.

No, in reality she wouldn't have known what she had learned.

It would have seemed so something to say it, but it wouldn't have been her. Perhaps she could say that she had dug a little deeper and had faced a world she had always seen from afar. And now that world was a bit her too. Maybe.

And while she thought about it, she was there, locked in the bathroom,

while someone outside was yelling.

“Bitch… get out of that damn bathroom!”

A knock on the door. “… Merde…”

Another.

Yet another.

“Fille de pute! ...” The bathroom door trembled.

“… Je t'avais déjà dit de ne pas rester fermée tout ce temps!”

Sveva had merely raised her head for a moment. She had endured her for almost three years. When she first arrived, she was afraid when she heard Anouk yelling from outside. She feared the door would fall on her while she was sitting on the toilet.

She imagined herself stuck with her pants down, while large men in uniform freed her. She thought about how embarrassing it would be to get stuck like that, under the door lying on top of her.

Everyone said Anouk was as beautiful as she was a bitch.

Surely on the second part they were right. Sveva thought.

With arched eyebrows and bangs brushing her eyes, she remained still and listened to the silence. She tried to figure out if Anouk had decided the bathroom siege was over or if she was looking for something to make the door collapse.

It was the same thing she feared when Anouk entered the room and flipped her bed while looking for a lighter.

She had tried to tell her that she didn't smoke and that she didn't care about her damn lighter.

But Anouk had replied: “Fake good girls like you are bitches… At least if you were sincere, you’d tell me what you think of me… Damn, everyone in this house knows you wet yourself when you see me pass by…”

She had seasoned the slow sentence that followed with a look of deep hatred: “Dis-moi ce que tu penses, merde…”

Every now and then Sveva also thought about changing houses, but then it passed. Anouk went in phases.

Often, ordering a Kibbeh nayeh from the Lebanese guy downstairs was enough to become great friends again for two or three days.

And for Sveva

and for the bathroom door

two or three days were enough

to breathe.

In those years, confused words had piled up in her mind.

What the hell did she know about what a Kibbeh nayeh was?

And yet

Now she had even learned the exact pronunciation.

The guy at the counter would tell her: "Parfait!"

And that Parfait in her mind took its place next to Kibbeh nayeh.

Without a real difference. Perhaps those two words, those two memories in her mind, spoke to each other in French, without her knowing anything about it.

Those two distant words would return home with her.

They would sleep in her bed, against her cat that for almost three years had continued to sleep on her pillow.

Would Zelda be happy about her return? She had never understood if she slept with her because she was fond of her or because she wanted to tell her that that pillow was hers.

Returning home. Three years had passed quickly.

Now she had two degrees to hide when applying for a job.

She laughed. She laughed because she was slowly transforming into one of the many professionals who complained on LinkedIn about being overqualified for the positions they applied for.

Sveva wasn't even thirty yet and was already preparing to pretend to be unprepared enough to deserve a job.

On her phone, there remained a long line of contacts lost among Insta, LinkedIn, TikTok, and more.

Group chats with friends. Group chats with friends of friends.

Chats for dinners that were only meant for that dinner. Chats where she had been added by mistake.

Chats where she had written things she shouldn't have.

The kindergarten moms' chat of a colleague from the studio where she had worked.

What the hell was she doing in that chat?

And then there was Vera.

She, her long red hair, and the nocturnal smell of ginseng were the scent of those three years.

She was

was everywhere, in every moment she remembered. They had never thought of getting a room in the same house.

They had seen each other when they could. They had had lunch and dinner together many times. Laughed at that distant world they lived in.

They had loved each other in their own way.

They had loved each other in a way they had not learned how to.

Sveva had almost immediately found a job in a design agency. Nothing definitive, but enough to get by.

Vera, on the other hand, continued to move from one bar to another, from restaurants where she worked undeclared to short-term contracts. She had never managed to be truly independent. Her family had helped her as much as they could.

Then, suddenly, that help disappeared.

When she could no longer pay the rent, she too began to disappear.

Sveva would have liked to help her. She had thought about it many times: hosting her, making space for her. But it wasn't possible. The other girls in the house disagreed. One said it wasn't the time. Another pretended not to understand.

And so they said goodbye, cried together, told each other they would see each other again. They had been careful to say everything one should say when saying goodbye. When you don't know, or perhaps you do know, that you won't see each other again.

And now Sveva thought of her while packing her bags.

While deciding what to take home and what to leave in Milan.

The day she met her wasn't by chance. She was agitated. No, she was terrified. Scared to death.

She was alone on the bus that took her to school, to IED.

She was finally about to start the Interaction Design course. It was ironic to think that at that moment she wouldn't have wanted to interact with anyone. She felt unprepared and terribly out of place on that bus.

During the journey from home to school, for her Vera had been just a small head far away with long red hair,

beautiful,

but distant.

She saw her, swaying among all those people. She seemed agitated, her head resting against the window, wanting to get out and leave.

She understood her perfectly.

Sveva also wanted to get out. To go home and tell Anouk that she and her toilet and her lighters could well go to hell.

To go back home to her parents and turn everything off. To pretend she had never left. To pretend she didn't care about anything anymore and that the only thing that mattered was getting by like everyone else. Like all those who wrote to her on Telegram or Insta that it was fine like that. They too would have left if they could have. They too would have wanted to have the balls to do what she had done.

The balls.

Damn, how was it possible that even her friends wrote the balls to her?

But no. She had left and now she was on that bus dirty with smells, branded perfumes, leather jackets, hairspray, laundry. Smells of people who, like her, were preparing to face the world and wanted a piece of it all to themselves. A fucking little piece of the world on which to plant their own flag. To die and say that even if it didn't mean a damn thing, that square meter had been theirs for what it was worth.

“Excuse me, are you getting off?”

Sveva hadn't heard. She had headphones in her ears. Spotify Premium. Arlo Parks. Let the world outside go to hell for a few minutes.

The man in front of her had gestured with his hand. He seemed annoyed. Sveva wondered what he wanted. She took off one headphone.

“I asked if you’re getting off…” The man looked at her and pointed towards the door behind her.

“No, I don’t have to get off...” Sveva moved, raised her eyebrows, and put the headphone back in her ear. Arlo Parks was back to vomiting her fears onto her.

When the bus turned right, the man next to her bumped into her. She held onto the hanging handle with one hand, but she slid against the woman sitting in front of her. The first time, she hadn't held her bag with her hands and it had hit her arm.

The woman now stared at her bag as if it were a large animal ready to devour her.

Her gaze was tense and it seemed she was trying to figure out where the next blow would come from. To Sveva, she seemed to have the same eyes as her cat when it hunted lizards in the garden.

Immobile,

ears pulled back,

hidden in the low grass

with the look of one playing the feline part.

It had even crossed her mind not to hold her bag and see if the woman would be a better hunter than her cat. But she wouldn't have the strength to argue that morning. So she restrained her chaotic instinct and pressed her bag tightly against herself.

Then the bus turned right, slowed down, and she found herself in front of the school entrance. The glass doors opened. Someone got off, and now it was her turn. In the noise of the engine and traffic, in the words of people passing quickly in front of the open doors, she had to find the strength to get off.

That was indeed her stop. She just had to take one step and go towards a new page of that life, which had now brought her far from home.

One step.

Only one.

When she touched the ground and felt the doors closing behind her, she thought that now she couldn't escape or say that

she hadn't been able to arrive on time

Her life was now in front of her.

Or maybe not exactly. Her life was to her left.

When she got off, she hadn't noticed that the girl with the wonderful long red hair had also taken that same step, with her same fear.

That girl also found herself, like her, in front of the school entrance, thinking what she was thinking.

Maybe the two of them together wouldn't overcome the fear they felt, but looking at each other

first fleetingly

and then in the eyes

they understood they were no longer alone.

Now

Now she wasn't there with her. She wouldn't be in front of the tracks to wave goodbye as she left. She wouldn't get off the train with her when it arrived at the town, maybe this time from the same door without fear.

Vera would remain a memory suspended among the memories of those years.

A perfume

or perhaps a color

that one doesn't forget.

And then

And then Sveva climbs stairs.

And then walks.

And then the subway,

red and green line.

And then escalators.

And then tapis roulant. While Vera and everything else remain around her.

Steps and platform nine

Train announcement

Three short steps

Smell of trabocco

And sound of wooden planks worn by the wind

Where the sea cannot reach

Sveva remains still

Time on that train is suspended silence.

The next station.

The tunnels.

Muffled steps along the corridor.

The sound of book pages turning.

The tap tap and again the tap tap. Long, fake nails on the screen.

Around her, gazes of men and women beyond the trees and houses, rushing past them.

High voltage line rising and falling quickly.

The long, motionless sprinklers

in the middle of the wheat fields. They were waiting for the summer heat to show themselves to the world passing on those trains. She too had waited and had gone. She had had her summer. She would have others. But for now, it's just autumn.

A boy and a girl play tavla defying the physics of the train. Every now and then they laugh. Sveva looks at them and sees her sister, far from her. She too enjoying her summer in some Milan around Europe.

She lowers her gaze, smiles, and rethinks the evenings with her old boyfriend she had left.

Evenings with him and their friends playing old board games.

He perhaps still lives with his parents in one of those houses that seen from afar, seen all together, seem like something. Perhaps not to her who lives a few houses beyond the walls. Of those that are not seen from down the hill and are not in the photographs. In Milan she would say: “See that small, slightly orange house in the background… well… two houses back are my parents’…”

Now she’s going to that house. More precisely, to her room, in that house. She’s not returning to disappear. She’s not returning to give up. Just to breathe and think what to do next. What the next destination is.

Touching her fingers with her thumb, she repeats these phrases because she wants to feel it.

She would like someone to tell her now.

But there’s no one.

And so she repeats it again and again.

She breathes these words and loses herself in hope.

She is not

returning

to

stay.

Sveva

who had left not to return

who was supposed to travel the world and had left

because perhaps she didn’t want to stay.

Sveva,

who on her olive bicycle

climbed and descended flowering hills

which in winter were motionless stones

sitting watching the sea.

Sveva,

who on her olive bicycle

watched the nets hanging in the sun

which had not left with her

and were waiting for her.