You have no idea what it is like to constantly disappoint people. You see it the moment you meet them. You see in their eyes that they expected something so entirely different, and here they are meeting... you.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

Homesickness is universal. But Neapolitan homesickness goes back further than the accidents of domicile. It is nostalgia for love and loss themselves, a soul-sickness caused by the very idea of leaving.

I'm vaguely embarrassed by myself sometimes.