Photos are doors to passageways.

They connect me.

Who I was; what I am

it’s all the one thing.

I am built on who I was;

I build on who I was.

Past and present collide

and are one.

In this moment, I feel excitement bouncing

around my heart as I stare into a picture of me

with my beautiful friend Flora

and I am the girl I was,

then.

In this moment, my fingers tingle

looking at my baby Carlo’s smooth

plump skin.

He’s a young man today

And my baby too.

Now, in this precise minute, I breathe in the delicate sweetness

of the chestnut flowers

that blossomed in my mother-father’s land in Lunigiana.

If past and present are one,

Then the future lives here too.