Flash Nonfiction

Otherland

by Edvige Giunta

Homesickness grows like a weed. I consider Spain a suitable candidate for my next home. I fantasize about living in a small house overlooking the Mediterranean, where I will write, the humming of waves in my ears.

At night I will watch planets and stars, clear in the undisturbed sky. On the plane of reluctant returns, the chatter of the Sicilian girlfriend of my adolescence stays in my head. Images of falling asleep with my mother, of wandering through the streets of old Catania, of stopping to buy freshly picked figs and berries from a crate sitting on a rickety chair flash by, and fade. And then I am back, back in this country not of my birth, and it claims me, just like that, without even saying, “May I?” Little by little, I forget the Siciliana I was a couple of weeks ago, and the familiar ache returns, sits right in the middle of my chest. It owns me. My throat tightens, and English words crawl out of me — stiff, unreal, foreign, these spiteful pretenders.

Appeared in Issue Spring '19