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by Nathaniel Mellor

She picked the oleander flowers out of my hair on the bus out of Rome. Half-wilted memories of a bootstrapped wedding on Via Monte Tarpeo underneath the Capitoline sky. Homeward bound now, a sort of going back is our only way forward. Fast movement across hot pavement, an epilogue to a once endless, still perfect, night. Passing under hilltop towns, a forgotten epilogue to a once great story, we draw ever closer to our new beginning, our previous end. Tunnel lights flicker as I close my eyes — she’s been asleep on me for an hour — at least we’re together.

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Nathaniel Mellor is a short story writer and poet who lives in Southern Italy. He has work published or forthcoming in Willawaw Journal, Second Chance Lit, and Henshaw Press. He is the current fiction editor of Pigeon Review. You can find him on Twitter.