Unspoken

"Why doesn't he remember me?"

My voice was hardly more than a murmur, but the question seemed louder than gunfire. At least with gunfire, the bullet that followed might have hit someone else.

"Is it me? Is it something I'm doing wrong?"

I paced restlessly by my bed, trying to control my frustration and guilt. My dogs watched me, whimpering and tilting their heads with bewilderment.

"I don't get it. He's still the same, but-"

I stopped pacing. Something had clicked in my head.

It wasn't him at all.

It was that I'd tried to tell him who I was.

I swerved off my pacing path and made towards my old wardrobe. Shoving aside uniforms and suits, I forced my way into the back of the wardrobe and tugged open an old box, dusty and smelling of age and nostalgia.

I reached into the box, praying to God that it was still there. My hand closed around its handle, and I let out a shaky sigh of relief.

Telling Italy didn't work.

I decided that I had to show him.