print previewback KATIE CHAPLE
In Trevi, One Town over from Spoleto on the Train
Our language still felt stapled to home—that raw rattle and reverb—
it was a foreign season, and time felt audible. The goat herder
in dust with his boom box watched us, lost in geography,
a scorched landscape where the ghost of whatever’s happened
still exists. Our breakfast at corner table lies long behind in that romantic
half-light of memory. The land grows into metaphor, and we stumble
onto an agriturismo whose name translates to cornflower. The couple
by the pool doesn’t look up, and the place is closed to us, that blue
that if we dove deep and stayed down long enough would slow
our mammal heartbeats, gather our blood in what is defined vital,
start saving ourselves, our breaths that we put into a world
that we pull out of. We would be separate—light motes
floating behind our eyelids like silent static. 
Black Holes Collide
Divination
In Trevi, One Town Over from Spoleto on the Train