i haven’t been back to italian class.
not really a decision—more like a slow unthreading.
at first i missed one, then two.
a message half-drafted. a reminder snoozed.
now it’s just a tab i don’t open.
i think of them sometimes, conjugating without me.
the schwa still soft in my mouth.
still mine, even if unused.
there was no rupture. no reason.
just me, always a little too tired, a little too elsewhere.
it’s not shame. not quite guilt either.
just the shape of absence when you let it stay.
i’ve left so many places like this.
no goodbye, no explanation.
not because it didn’t matter, but because it did—and i couldn’t hold it all.
the leaving isn’t loud.
it’s slow. partial. unfinished.
like language.
like me.
maybe this is what pause looks like.
sun on porcelain. bridge in the distance. book barely opened.
the city behind the cup isn’t waiting. it just moves.
but for a moment, i don’t.
they still whisper her name like it’s dangerous.
but this isn’t a whisper.
it’s a scream, wheatpasted to brick.
marie-josèphe angélique—enslaved, accused, executed.
not for a crime,
but for refusing to live quietly in a world built to crush her.
je me souviens, they say.
but they don’t mean her.
they mean the colony.
they mean the order she tried to set fire to.
this paper will peel, fade, dissolve into dust.
but she was never paper.
she was kindling.
and we’re still burning.
theory. metaphor. refusal.
how we stayed alive.
