Tag: rodents

Centered within a wide white border is a black-and-white photograph of a devastated urban street framed tightly around an elderly man sitting on a wooden bench. He is bald and dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and tie. His posture is slightly forward, with one hand resting on the bench and the other near the handle of a long cane that extends diagonally. Facing the camera, his expression is solemn and composed rather than overtly emotional. Immediately behind him stands a tracked construction vehicle, its heavy metal body filling much of the middle ground. The background consists of a ruined city street lined with bomb-damaged buildings. Rubble spills across sidewalks and into the roadway. On the right, the shell of a commercial building survives, the letters of its faded sign are difficult to decipher. Farther back, fragments of taller buildings and decorative towers punctuate the skyline, hinting at the neighborhood's former architectural richness. The overall effect is one of profound stillness: a solitary man quietly inhabiting a landscape of last days. (Public domain, from the author.)

“Last Days of Ambrogino” * Fiction * Peter J. Dellolio

aromatica poetica August 7, 2026

I was told that after the war a patrol of soldiers found me lying unconscious in an abandoned building in a town I could not remember. The soldiers brought me to a hospital where I was gradually revived and given medication for some wounds I had received. These were not gunshot wounds. When I awoke, I could not recall who I was or where I had come from. That is, I did not know if I belonged to this town, …