Pentedattilo, Calabria
Summer in Calabria is long and unforgiving. Along the gravel road, prickly pears rise coarse and tall, their fruit heavy with heat. A fallen one bursts beneath my shoe—pulp and seed scattering in a wet collapse.
Edward Lear passed here in 1847 and found it “perfectly magical.”
I’m sweating through my shirt. The road keeps rising.
Two crows wheel against the stone, their caws unanswered.
