Cinzia Benigni
Un bacio
2024
Photo credit e courtesy: l’artista

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH CINZIA BENIGNI

I was not yet thinking about the falls, swallowed up by that little chair where I settled, a bit sideways. Little white and pink flowers were falling on our heads and all around, and instinctively I gathered them and slipped them onto my fingertips, to play with them and see them up close.
I wanted to feel them on my fingers and between my fingers, so smooth and plump, and I gently took them one after the other, as if it were a ritual, and I looked for more to collect, in that afternoon of chatting in the shade of the beating sun, after we had moved out back with the baby lettuce and the dry stone wall of blue and layered stone of Pino.
There was a small table in the middle, in which you could embed those flowers that fell, at their desire… “Flora, what are they called?”
“Laurier rose…”
I wanted to hold them on my fingers and it fascinated me to witness the spontaneous “fall” of a flower and of an orange, even! A big pulpy orange, perfectly round, or rather two.
I saw them towards evening arriving from a short staircase, from the top of the path that led from my room to the street, holding Time on a leash and trying not to stumble; they were both beautifully squashed, one on the ground and one on the low wall, they had even opened into wedges in the impact and so they looked like melted lanterns; I found them lovable, those oranges, that so ripe, juicy and heavy had detached themselves, falling down. And the thud in the fall had modified their shape: becoming the banquet of numerous insects, flies, bees and ants, the most predictable ones…
But a butterfly surprised me, drawn close to that orange: from where I could observe it it was tilted, like a face before a kiss, and it seemed gentle, and I remember thinking that it might feel something similar to happiness.
And the tree was full of ripe oranges and the oleander too was swollen with flowers and even the pink hydrangea near the fountain of Felix illuminated by the setting sun looked like luminous skin!
That day the fallen flowers slipped right onto our conversations, the oranges fell for the butterflies… and I asked myself: “Who knows if they know it, that moment before leaving forever, who knows if they feel it, if they too then feel it, life.”