Train from Firenze to Roma

Staring out the train window from Firenze back to Rome. The green is something so earthly, so deeply natural. So much more beautiful than anything that could be created by humans. I stumble into this life tripping and falling to my knees, but I kiss the ground in front of me before I stand back up. Because I know, like the leaves, like the roots, like the pollinators, like the branches: this life is anything but uncomplicated. And I reach out to the sky out my window, asking it for inspiration, I am confronted with the world in front of me. Anything I create is nothing that can amount, and it shouldn’t be. For anything I create must be grounded in this life I lead.

It’s a lucky life I lead. I’ve been able to gaze in awe at the different marvels of this world more in these ridiculous 19 years than most people will in their entire lives. And no matter how many hardships I’ve faced, I’ve moved forward and been gifted with experience. Rich with four-leaf clovers and pennies heads side up. Meteor showers over our car as we drove to safety from COVID. The stars told me someone was watching over me. Everything has inevitably fallen into place, even when it hurt to have the decision clawed out of my hands.

It’s a lonely life I lead, no matter how much I see. I am so grateful this world is my home but it is far too great to all be mine. This seat is borrowed, as is this view. This city is a rental; I keep it nice for the next tenant and dream of home. Because these trees aren’t the trees of the Italian countryside–no, to me they’re reminders of the Catskills. The buildings are all an unfamiliar neighborhood in New York City. The train resembles the bus up to Stone Ridge. The sky stretches as it does in California. The stranded houses could just as easily be that of a cousin’s.

It’s an overwhelming life I lead. The memories tumble out of every corner of my mind. They wash over, a tsunami in my head as I leave the moment to relive a memory I hadn’t realized I could hold. And just as ocean water, it trickles out of the cracks between my fingers leaving only the smell of salt and the wrinkles of my skin to translate back to others. I want to hold all of it. The bolognese I would have on Friday nights with Riley and Summer. Listening to music on the bus back from grief camp with my mother. Holding my grandmother’s hand on her death bed. The first time I left the country. Every conversation too good to remember that I’ve had with a friend. Every smile from a relative. Every time I realized Ady was growing up too.

It’s an empty life I lead. Every loss has ripped something out of me. My organs were carved out and laid in front of me as my mother and therapist pointed and identified the bodily instrument’s purpose and how I will have to function without it, slower and with more difficulty than those without surgical scars. And I find it harder to open up as I get older, harder to lay back down on the operating table, harder to explain the layers of thoughts in my mind. And the weight of it all is enough to open back up the old scars–they never healed properly, rushed timelines.

It’s a complicated life I lead. Both blessed and cursed, ginormous and microscopic, thoughtful and uncaring, some moments a snail and others a speeding bullet. I love my family but would rather spend the day smoking away my intellect with my friends than call them. I love my friends but would rather disappear than work through problems with them. I hate hypocrisy but my middle name is taken from a Bob Dylan song; contrarian is in my blood. I hate leaving my family but it’s easier than staying. Staying in the ghostly halls of my father’s apartment. Haunted by smiles and laughter, the most devastating kind of haunting in quiet rooms. However, I want to go home whenever I’m away just to lay my bones, I can’t decompose from away. I call myself a creative because creation and imagination used to be my default, inspiration was never something sought for, yet as I sit on the train from Firenze back to Rome I am at a loss. The only thing I can formulate is as clear of a re-imaging of what I’m experiencing now as I can draw up into words. And what I’m experiencing is all beautiful, so beautiful, and beautiful things don’t come with ease. I hold onto this life with both hands.

Julia Kess is a sophomore majoring in English Literature with a minor in Italian. She is from New York City where her passion for theater, music, and literature began. She performs with The Merry Men improv every Monday as well as works on the board of Aeneid Theatre Company. In addition to theater at USC, she enjoys hiking, climbing, and is a guide for SC Outfitters. Her favorite authors include Virginia Woolf, Tana French, and Matt Haig. You can find Julia on Instagram here.