Page 105 of Queen
Motherhood, Peace, and the Sword Beneath the Table
The kitchen fills with the warm scent of tomatoes simmering in oil, garlic hissing as it hits the pan, basil crushed between my fingers until its perfume blooms in the air. A normal meal, in anormal house, in a normal town. The kind of life I once thought belonged only to strangers.
“Ma!” Guido’s voice cuts through the hum of the stove. “I’m stuck.”
I set the knife down and glance toward the doorway. His tone is half-whine, half-command—the way children sound when they believe their mothers can fix anything, even the broken edges of the world. My lips twitch into something dangerously close to a smile.
I step into the sunlit room and find him cross-legged on the floor, puzzle pieces scattered across the board between his knees. The picture half-formed—a seaside castle, its towers jutting upward like the cliffs outside our window. His hair is a storm of black tufts, his face pinched with frustration.
“Here.” He jabs at a jagged piece that refuses to fit where he wants it. “It should go there. Why won’t it?”
I kneel beside him, take the piece, rotate it once, and slide it into place. The picture sharpens, the tower rising whole from the chaos of fractured stone.
Guido’s grin breaks like sunrise. For a fleeting second, his shadows lift, and I see the boy he was before bombs, before blood, before crowns. My chest aches with the sight.
“See?” I murmur, brushing his hair back from his face. “Not everything belongs where we want it. But it still has a place.”
He nods, satisfied, and bends back over the puzzle. I watch him for a moment longer, then retreat to the kitchen. The tomatoes are bubbling, the sauce thickening, its hiss like a reminder that ordinary life continues even in exile.
I open the drawer beside the stove. The wood slides quietly, but my heart still pounds as though someone might hear. Inside lie the tools of survival: three passports with false names, a stack of euros wrapped tight in twine, and at the bottom, Giovanni’s dagger. The steel gleams as though it hasn’t dulled in a hundredyears, the hilt smoothed by too many hands. My fingers brush the blade, a shiver running through me.
A mother in exile is still a mother at war.
I close the drawer before Guido notices. He deserves his puzzle, his tower, his fragile piece of childhood. He doesn’t need to see the weapons that lurk beneath our bread and basil.
“Ma, look!” he calls again, pride bubbling in his voice. “The tower’s finished!”
I wipe my hands on a linen cloth and step back into the room. Sure enough, the castle stands complete, the sea crashing around it in painted blue. Guido beams up at me, waiting for praise, his eyes bright for once instead of haunted.
“Well done,” I whisper, kneeling to kiss the top of his head. The scent of soap and salt clings to him. For a heartbeat, I let myself believe in this peace.
But then I see the puzzle for what it is: a fortress with fragile walls, a tower already destined to fall.
“Remember,” I add softly, my hand lingering in his hair, “every castle has enemies at its gates.”
His smile falters. Just slightly. A shadow flickers across his face, quick as lightning. He may not understand the words, but he feels them. My son carries ghosts in his blood, and no puzzle can piece them away.
I curse myself silently for planting that fear in him. He deserves to laugh. To run. To be a boy. But I cannot give him that. Not here. Not ever.
Because I know the truth: castles crumble, crowns tarnish, puzzles scatter. And the quiet life we’ve built above these cliffs is not an ending. It’s only a pause before the war begins again.
Reflection – Letters Never Sent
The oak table by the window is scarred with knife marks from cooks long gone, its surface softened by sea air and salt. My leather-bound journal lies open across it, the pages swollen and yellowed from damp winds. Ink bleeds like old wounds, curling into the fibers until each word looks half-buried, half-immortal.
Every page is a letter I never sent. To Emiliano. To Santino. And tonight—for the first time—to myself.
The pen trembles in my grip, not from weakness but from the weight of what I carry. Crowns, scars, memories that claw like ghosts. I steady my hand, press the nib down, and carve the truth onto paper.
Forgive him. Forgive yourself. But never forget.
The ink scratches deep, biting through the page. My chest aches with moments that will never fade—Giovanni’s coffin lowered into the dirt, Guido’s cries the night I fled, the silence in Emiliano’s eyes when I kissed him goodbye. That kiss said nothing. And everything. His quiet had been the loudest vow:I will love you even if I let you go.
I write harder, faster, as if bleeding truth will make it lighter.
To Emiliano:
You are still mine. I am still yours. Exile doesn’t break chains like ours—it only stretches them across distance. I left to protectour son, not to unlove you. Nothing—not war, not oceans, not even time—will sever what binds us.
