Ferragosto
by Judith Valente

On August 15, 2019, two brothers, ages seven and nine, drowned in the Adriatic Sea on
the Feast of the Assumption, a holiday known in Italy as Ferragosto.

We thought the water was a soft blanket we could throw over our heads
and pull down again, the sea a bed we could rise from.

It was the Feast of the Assumption when Mary enters
paradise, her body assumed whole, uncorrupted.

The hungry sea consumed my brother and me,
fickle in its calm demeanor. We held each other’s hands,

tumbled into the water’s salty mouth. At first, it was exciting,
the way our father sometimes rolled us over in his arms.

We became fish caught in the rocks’ toothy jaws
until we separated into a silent blindness.

I remembered running between trees, how a soccer ball feels,
the scent of my mother’s skin, the touch of my father’s rough hands.

I surrendered to the wordless, undulating movement.
Soon my brother and I were floating above the beach,

women we did not know clasped hands to their mouths,
tears ran down their tanned faces,

men I did not recognize made the sign of the cross.
Our father held our mother as she bowed and moaned.

A pair of white gulls left Y-shaped prints on the sand.
Then I was alone. Then the birds grew silent.



 

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