I Am From...

I am From… 

By Gabrielle Filippini 

I am from the intersection of bustling main streets where people talk, children play,  

and drivers refuse to use their turn signals. 

I am from a home overlooked by towers 

topped with giant golden onions  

which ring like sonic booms every hour on the hour and at midnight on Easter Sunday. 

I am from patchy, itchy crabgrass; 

the neighborhood weeds  

which spread like contagion every summer. 

Who started it? 

It wasn’t me! 

(It might have been me.) 

I am from sometimes hurtful sarcasm 

and vocabularies sustained by old movie quotes. “Put. The Candle. Back!” 

I am from a long-running game of Jeopardy with my father which began the day I learned to speak 

and ended July 11th, 2020. 

And just when I was finally winning too. 

I am from an ocean’s worth of marinara sauce and enough older cousins to drown in. 

I swim upstream through family just to be heard like the fish we serve every Christmas Eve. 

I am from two brave people who stepped off a boat 100 years ago, 

who we are reminded of every time 

someone puts raisins and pine nuts in their meatballs. (Doesn’t make it right, though.)