#shortstory 


By Patrizia Poli


Terrified of becoming nothing, you never think that you sprung from nowhere. For example, I, Giuseppe Rossi, am this nothing.

Let me explain.

I, Giuseppe Rossi in fact, am not yet born, not even designed nor intended. My entity, Giuseppe Rossi’s entity, identifies with nothing. I am, or rather I am only in the sense that I am not, there's my not being here. I do not have a body nor sides, nor under nor over.

The space in which, so to speak, I exist-am, it's dark and quiet, although I would not call it dark, since I do not have eyes to see it. Time is a concentration of equal moments.

I'm only my future. Just due to the fact that in this moment I know the future, I can tell you about me. In my concentrate broth, I review the future life as a booklet with curled pages.

My name is Joseph, oh, well, that I've already said.

I'll own a gas station.

Yes, but only after that father’s hungry tadpole is stuck in mother’s egg. Zac!

I will vibrate, shapeless lump that is already Giuseppe Rossi, green bean with black eyes like pinheads, nestled in the folds of a uterus and more interested in the problem of proliferation. At that point I'll have an inside and an outside, I will sense what happens, feel the plunger pump, and experience hot and wet and sticky.

Then I’ll get out of the hole.

Mother will be angry when, after taking a good vote at the exams, I'll manage a gas station withFrancis, but I will already have Annamaria in mind and I’ll want to marry her. We will see each other every night, I will take her on my scooter, she will have firm thighs, the red eyes of a rabbit, and she will beat time with her fairy feet. We will dance close to one another all the night long.

But I'm going to marry Jane. At the wedding it’s going to rain and the priest will forget the ring, there will be chicken in aspic and trout, she will be pregnant. I will have known her at the distributor - after Annamaria will already have gone to Milan with the engineer – Jane will stick to me, although I stink of gasoline.

When Pinuccia is born, Mariolino will already have three and he is going to hate the little sister. Pinuccia will come out red, just like Anna, who will have become mad and the engineer will have her locked up in the nursing home in Milan.

At my mother's funeral I'll be late and it will be there that I realize that Jane, after pregnancy, has put on weight. Good woman, Jane, also good in bed when at night, after inflating so many tires, I want to have a little fun too.

But then she will get slim because of cancer, she will become thinner and thinner. When she dies, she will lay down as if to say: look what happened to me. And I will think, yes, she’s a fine woman, but she is not Annamaria.

After that, Pinuccia will wash my shirts, my little red haired that will have married Francis’ son. The gas station will be managed by the two of them. Pinuccia will wash my shirts on Saturday, while her husband fucks another woman.

I will die of a stroke, God willing.

I will not feel bad, I will only be sad for my Pinuccia. There will be lots of beautiful light and silence and a great gas station, all smelling of petrol. I, on the motorcycle, will kiss Annamaria.

Here, in my not to be prior to my existence, am reading with you the book of the future.

But I do not know ... It’s that... I almost feel like giving up ...

What do you think?

Giuseppe Rossi's Future