introductions.

[burnedorange]

She arranges carnations in vases and the vases she continues to put on display, on her windowsill, for everyone to see, these funeral flowers. They are orange, the vases are black as sorrow, as grief. She is putting flowers out for the one that she lost, all these years later, the memories breathe down her neck, down lungs of their own. The memories have taken up residence, they live their own life.

Carmela is not neapolitan by birth, she is a newcomer, still, fifteen years after she moved to the city. Never quite at home so close to the ocean, having grown up in a mountain town up north, she has nevertheless made Napoli a place of her own, set up house here and born the neighborhood a new resident, her daughter, little Chiarina, her purpose, her joy.

Yet, she thinks back - on days that were, the love that came before her daughter, the girl whose name she has inherited. Chiara, her childhood sweetheart, her first love and for all intents, her last. She loved beautiful Chiara to the moon and back, but couldn't hold on to that love across the distance between Asolo and Napoli, the letters flowed so freely first, then ebb followed and the words ran out between her fingers. She was eighteen when the last letter arrived in her mailbox, a reply that was six months in the making, letters took too much effort, phone numbers changed, life changed directions. She lost sight of her, Chiara, now she's only a bout of nostalgia, a lingering pain. The never quite innocent longing for childhood's simplicities.

She reaches out, though.

To this day Carmela writes letters, but they all remain unsent, since the recipient has no address that she knows of anymore.