SACRO BOSCO

Sacro Bosco, 2026
A place where stone speaks

Carved in the sixteenth century as though giants emerged halfway from the earth and simply decided to stay there. Time nearly reclaimed them beneath moss until hands restored the forgotten faces. There is one sculpture everyone comes to see. A great mouth. A stone creature whose lips remain forever open in astonishment, hunger or invitation. Steps in decreasing size lead into its darkness. We entered quietly and took seat on the chiseled bench that wrapped around the hollowed space. In the center a sacrificial table rises from the same living rock. A texture of claws and thick finger strokes, its grooves slightly filled with green.

The chamber carried sound as though it had spent centuries learning how to listen. There was resonance even within our whispers. My voice cracked but willingly opened further and poured into the walls. A chant of the void rhythm rose as my voice spiralled into notes it had never touched. As I sang to the space, an extension of the vibration pulled through my throat. And suddenly I felt the weight of the despicable face, whose smile carries the deepest burden. It is the part of us who felt most and was mirrored least. The one who could never find its depth reflected in the outer world. The one who reached and kept meeting surfaces. The one who, in a world of unemotional relationship, learned to become either the victim or the violent one.

Visitors came and I silenced. They left and my voice rose once more, as naturally as birds resume after footsteps fade. I have been learning this Italian song, A la guerra, A la guerra. To war, To war. It wonders whether love is a kind of battle. Whether the polarity must merge completely to touch love again. As I sing I understand almost none of its words. Perhaps the medicine is to allow our tongues to know before the mind translates into meaning. When we stepped outside again, all visitors had disappeared and the garden was empty. Only us and the giant mouth.

There are moments the body offers expression which cannot be rehearsed. Menstrual blood belongs to its own mysterious timing. The moon beneath my skin called the tides into surrender and my blood dropped into the gaping mouth. It flowed down one leg. Then the other. Dark red. Bright red. Ancient red. Some of it splashed directly from womb to stone without touching my labia. Naked I stood in the mouth of the primordial threshold. Bleeding, woman and monster meeting.

Much of our lives we try to rise toward the light without tending our roots. There are seasons the soul asks us instead to descend. To enter the cave. To sit on the tongue of the forgotten wild one. To lower our broken heart into the pelvis, the womb chalice. To bleed, to sing, to weep, to feel the sorrow buried between the soft tissue of our bones. Held in the dark of this listening cave, we may find that the coin that keeps flipping was never two. Only one wound, wearing two faces.