image by author.

fifty-three.

“You’ve been staring at that sheet for about an hour now,” I said to myself — aloud. My choice of an empty page, not judging me. Put pen to paper?

I was a guest in a chalet not far from Courchevel, sipping my après-ski drink, all by myself. Or was I on a trip in Italia, enjoying a ‘pasta aglio e olio’ with a glass of Peroni, in the far corner of a restaurant where the menu was a photocopied sheet of handwritten scribbling — in Italian only — oily and sticky to the touch? Not so sure.

I was drenched in sweat, stinking and disoriented — that’s a fact.
Wailing, whimpering broken sentences even I couldn’t make sense of.

“No, thanks,” I said because I could’ve sworn I heard someone ask “Coffee?” A deception, one of many.