I, Mona Lisa (Painting Mona Lisa) by Jeanne Kalogridis

I, Mona Lisa (Painting Mona Lisa) by Jeanne Kalogridis

Author:Jeanne Kalogridis [Kalogridis, Jeanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 15th Century, Arts, Fiction - Historical, Italy, de Medicis
ISBN: 9780312341398
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2015-04-20T04:00:00+00:00


. . .

During my childhood, I had an experience of pure warmth, of opening, of unconditional union. I had been desperately sick, so sick that the adults surrounding me spoke in muted voices about my death. I remember a terrifying weight on my chest, the sensation of drowning in my own fluids, of not being able to breathe.

They brought up kettles and a wooden trough. They filled it with near-scalding water, and my mother lowered me into it.

Once I was immersed to my neck in the water, its steam settled tenderly on my face; its generous heat permeated my bones. I looked down at my reddening flesh and—thinking the way a child does—thought that it would melt, yield, and merge with the warmth. I closed my eyes, blissful, and felt my skin dissolve until there was nothing but my beating heart and the water. All weight, all heaviness, dispersed into the air.

I was alive. I could breathe.

Being with Giuliano was the same. There was heat; there was opening. There was union. I could breathe.



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