chiaroscuro - john rc potter

I once spent three days driving through Italy, 

yet the country was really driving me

not crazy, but somewhere I had never been. 

I drove up a mountain, trying hard to keep up 

with the crazy momentum of the cars ahead and behind,

so as not to fall off the edge.  

There were three of us in that car:

my sister, my cousin, and me,

on a journey that led us down a road

and onto and into ourselves.

I vowed never to return to Italy,

a country of such chaos and cacophony;there is a price to be paid 

for such mystery and history.  

I recently spent three months on a journey with you,

a crazy rollercoaster ride

with no one at the controls.

The mountain I had to climb

alone, with you, was you;

you took me on a journey 

you should have taken alone.

I tried to keep up with you

but your stories changed often

and I stumbled on the many masks that fell from your face. 

There were three of us that day 

when you told me it was finito;

you, me, and your daughter driving motionless, as if in a dream.  

I once said I would never return to Mussolini’s Italy, 

that a country of such emotion

drains me of my energy, and yet I remember 

Italy now, a sunny memory, a darkened photo;

it calls to me and won’t rest until I answer.

I promised myself that last day

that I would never see you again, 

yet you appear in memory and in person:

real, unreal, surreal. 

In the bar last night, you were

half-dream, half-shadow, half-hidden, 

as you always were and yet,

I want you as I want Italy. 

John RC Potter is an international educator from Canada, living in Istanbul. He has experienced a revolution (Indonesia), air strikes (Israel), earthquakes (Turkey), boredom (UAE), and blinding snow blizzards (Canada), the last being the subject of his story, “Snowbound in the House of God” (Memoirist). His poems, stories, essays, and reviews have been published in a range of magazines and journals, most recently in Blank Spaces, (“In Search of Alice Munro”), Literary Yard (“She Got What She Deserved”), Freedom Fiction (“The Mystery of the Dead-as-a-Doornail Author”), The Serulian (“The Memory Box”), The Montreal Review (“Letter from Istanbul”) & Erato Magazine (“A Day in May 1965”). His story, “Ruth’s World” (Fiction on the Web) was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. The author’s gay-themed children’s picture book, The First Adventures of Walli and Magoo, is scheduled for publication. Website: https://johnrcpotterauthor.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JohnRCPotter

Instagram: John RC Potter (@jp_ist)