A pear tree occupies a corner of the garden: some branches full of fruit, others covered only with leaves. When the pears are ripe—or conversely, already empty because worms have eaten their insides–they drop: the grass barely moves, and the chirping of cicadas and the stillness of a season are, for an instant, shattered by a thump. 

Were it not for certain aged and somewhat discolored objects, all summers at Grandma’s house might be a repetition of a single summer in which all the shades of green and yellow of the fields in Irpinia bleed into each other and the wind turbines are stationary beyond the hills and the sea is so far away that one can only try to imagine it.