Vittoria Ginevri

'I’m clearing out my room today. My parents have decided to rent out our house in Rome; the house that has seen me split my eyebrow against a glass table; the one that has seen me afraid of mirrors, to the point of having my parents remove any trace of them from my bedroom; and whose bathroom saw me cry at my ninth birthday party because one of the girls I’d invited wasn’t letting me use the karaoke machine. I’m sitting on the floor, my feet are bare and my sleeves are rolled up: I’m ready to undertake this challenge. It will take me three days, exactly the amount of time I have allotted for this task, and no longer. I have a flight to catch on the fourth day. 

There’s a box inside the bright pink drawer: the box itself is just as intensely magenta, and I immediately know what is about to spill, messy, like sickly nostalgia. I realised, up until that moment, I couldn’t remember how sweet those bands smelled. Now, every time I breathe in their scent, it overwhelms my senses, and, just as suddenly, abandons me. I am left with an unshakeable feeling of being sat with the skin of my bare thighs against terracotta tiles, shaded from the sun by a flimsy canopy. Sweet, so sweet, how they were. It’s a wonder I’ve never tried eating one. I am filled with the urge to consume it into my very being. I throw it out.'