All these goodbyes
Matteo Buonomo
I’m pruning the lavender outside my home door.
It’s late September.
I planted this lavender with my girlfriend and my father 5 years ago.
We moved here 5 years ago, my girlfriend and I.
Here it’s a tiny countryside village in Southern Sicily.
I saw a personal hope in this lavender.
I’m horrible as a gardener.
I never know where to cut.
To grow without needing much.
To be simple.
To develop strong and deep and firm roots.
That’s the hope I had.
I came here to exile myself.
I came here to find a spark of grace in my solitude.
I came here to be comforted by the shimmering of the light on a wet leaf after the rain.
The lavender has grown big.
I have the feeling that something is coming to an end.
I often find myself chasing any sort of end.
On some windy days I can smell the lavender presence the moment I open the door.
I came here to calm my turmoil.
This place left me restless.
The huge vastness around me gave me a sense of claustrophobia.
It’s starting to rain.
This is probably the last time I’m pruning my lavender.
She made it.
I failed.

LOVE MOM
I can’t say exactly what made me understand they were special.
Maybe it was the way she looked at her son when I put my face inside the car.
Maybe it was the way her son immediately moved between his mother and me, as if to protect her.
It was a matter of seconds, and I felt that something special was in that car.
I met Kristal two weeks after her last overdose.
We met by accident.
I was hitchhiking across the US with no set destination.
She was driving along Highway 412 in Arkansas.
I was looking for humanity.
She was with Skyler, her son.
I was inspired by Steinbeck’s pages.
She was headed home.
It was midday.
All the shadows fell harshly to the ground.
My thumb was up on the side of the road.
Kristal drove her shabby white jeep closer and stopped a few meters ahead of me.
She gave me a ride.
I was immediately impressed by them.
I felt that Kristal and Skyler had a special connection.
I saw a bold relationship between a mother and a son—a relationship I never had.
I felt that everything I was looking for was in that car.
I was headed nowhere.
I stayed with them.
I experienced the opposite side of the American Dream.
I felt the loneliness and melancholy of when people stop dreaming.
What follows is the chronicle of the time we spent together.
Doing things and doing nothing.
Being happy and being sad.
Being excited and being frustrated.