unsent letter from elena greco, found on the seafloor of the amalfi coast

after the Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante

Lila, you were the holy mother

of 1960s Naples, new money mod Madonna,

all I knew was your blowout brunette hair

and your husband’s brass knuckles, his broken

mirrors, your bruised head haloed by the wire

frames of hospital beds. Before

you ran away you confessed: I have a loveless

civilization buried in my lungs, your exhales silkscreened

with strawberry gelato and a shoemaker’s knife,

the blade that warded you from mafia princes

but not from the blue-eyed butcher, eager to flense

you into his bride, the blade you lost

in the leather stomach of his fast car, driving

to your honeymoon as you sighed against your death

sentence, you would rather drive deep into the Adriatic

and never be touched again. Lila, I am no poet’s

daughter, more camera than woman, more archivist

than open legs, but I swear I will write epics

about the scratch marks on your headboard, frantic

as marginalia, I will re-record history until there is enough

room for your matchstick limbs, until I canonize the miracle

that is your survival, those years of coiffures and chloroform

kisses, the stars colliding like broken teeth as you hid

from your husband, shivering behind racks of appleskin

sweaters, Our Lady of cinematic cigarette burns, of praying

pregnancies into lemon pith blood clots,

of poverty turned patent pumps.

I still hear your muffled screams

across the gap of my teal teenage summers, I still see

you in every wedding photo, every thrashing wave,

every shining doorway of this bloodsoaked city that I left

behind, your blackened eyes following me out

to the sea.