Flowers and the little crow.

The east winds are not my soul, but the biding of ethereal displacement.

During their gusts, all cocktail parties end in fights. Snakes find their way indoors. Cliffs move inches and valleys are shallow. Babies carry maps of their own. Fires have no origin. Tempestuous not an apt word. Humans morph into animals. Fruit rots when you touch it.

I miss the east winds in Italy during the summers. When the heat has reached the pinnacle.

The winds come in and you can hear a sigh go through the villages, though only at the beginning. For weeks, they’ve been waiting for the sun to turn back. For the intimacy of proximity to escape. And when the winds slice through, they forget about the sun. You stand in doorways, on the edge of cliffs, on tiled roofs… anywhere that allows you more time with the winds. They become your lovers, drifting over the hills of your flesh, touching intimate crevices that make your cheeks blush. You feel it swirling around every hair follicle on your head, and you swear that you’ve never been this close to anyone, anything ever before.

You may grant it permission, if you are young. You deny all contact you can, if you are old.

The spinsters and grandmothers know what happens during these times. How it makes people go mad. You’ll hear the old stories of the crows that brought it here. Early on, they tell the children, the young neighbors, how dangerous this can be. Over and over, “Nessuna merce viene dal gioco con i bambini dei venti orientali.” -That no good comes from playing with the children of east winds. No one listens, they’ve already been claimed.

As I grew older I began to listen to the static before the strike. The heavy buzz before the chaos would begin. And at night, when I’d try to lay myself down to sleep, the anticipation fried my nerves. You learn that it cannot be escaped… No matter how many elderly women tie scarves over their ears, noses, and mouths. Everyone goes crazy, everyone sees dust, everyone becomes a demon. A storm that only brews inside of you.

In my late teenage years it became sexual, dirty. It made you act like a stronger, more assertive version of yourself. Everything becomes primal, feral even.

It’s dizzying. Parties are everywhere, the boozing the only way the South gets through it. You’d throw your words to Croatia as you danced with men you didn’t know, their sweat dripping on you. Armfuls of bright flowers, blooms as big as a newborn’s head, thrown into the sea. The fantasies and desires that you saturated them with were supposed to be offerings to the summer, to ensure that the winds would keep blowing through them, to stir lecheries and cravings, to keep your skin cool.

It was madness. Dramatic and vibrant. Vaudevillian. Huge posters and murals would cover villages and cities. As if King Momo left Brazil and it was our turn to sin for him.

Something about this winter, in this state, keeps tripping me. Tricking me.

Last night I swear I heard the east seeping in through the cracks of the old window frames. I knew it couldn’t be true. Still, I opened the windows… I’m young enough to keep an invitation on my nightstand for Eurus.

Perhaps it’s just the longing for something ravenous.

What would Grandmama say if she knew I were playing with the little crows?