Columns - Luna Park
by Alessandra Carnaroli




They should put in a heat sensor or something similar, something that lets you feel that there is a living being in there, that its heart is still beating, that blood is still running inside it, something different from a stone or even a lizard, something that exists even when it stays still.

Because sometimes it happens that they do not move, they are as still as statues, like those Lourdes Virgins with the water inside that changes color according to the weather, them changing expression but imperceptibly, like people in a coma, the ones they call vegetative because vegetables is inhuman, they cannot call them carrots, better plants, maybe houseplants. It happens that they sleep, a deep sleep made of small twitches, sighs, sometimes a smile, nothing much: they call them angels’ smiles and who ever hears them?

You go along the road untroubled, you drive, you shift down, you look in the rearview mirror and you do not see them. You do not remember that you loaded them in along with the diaper bag, the wet wipes, the teething spoon, a scrap of undershirt with your smell on it.

You only see the traffic, the car too close behind you, right on your ass, for sure it is a male with the sporty driving, the driving of someone who thinks that he bought the car, he bought the whole road, the express lane all the way to work, and now he also expects to rush you, make you feel with his headlights who is in charge.

You turn around and you only see the cyclist you have just passed, I always turn around every time after I have passed a cyclist, I do it to understand whether he is still upright, whether he is still pedaling, whether he is telling me to fuck off because maybe I touched him, I clipped him by mistake, but barely, just an elbow, just with the mirror, even though I think it would make some noise, no, not much, no, not a real thud like when you hit a pole, maybe less, maybe a branch, there, at least a twig sticking out over the road, you hear it scraping along the side, but it is the cyclist’s suit, the ergonomic polyester suit catching fire, going up in combustion, the suit rubbing against the metal, or else the cyclist’s elbow that loses its balance and falls to the ground, I see it in the mirror. I have to look at all 3 mirrors for safety, the rearview one, the two side ones, I have to see that he is still pedaling, make sure it is not a dazzle, given that it is July and on the road there are those strange phenomena that look like waves, unidentified bodies made of heat.

I have to be certain that no car has stopped to render aid, that no one is chasing me for failure to render aid.

Usually at this point I stop and turn back to be certain that there has been no accident, that the cyclist is still pedaling, that the dog of the random woman on the roadside is still on its leash and not stuck to my fender.

Or else I stop and wait to hear from far away the ambulance siren.

An air ambulance.

The veil of the temple tearing.

Anyway, on cyclists they should put some kind of sensor for the heat of the bodies that eventually remain wedged under the car, the ones you run over and do not notice because of the fog or the rain, that you drive thirty kilometers with them attached like baby on board stickers. It had happened in Senigallia too.

They set off as adults and arrive weighing as much as newborns.

Or else, as I was saying at the start, a thermal scanner in the car seats of the small children that goes off if you get out of the car without thinking and that one stays there sleeping on the seat and you had not noticed that he was there while you were watching the cyclist. That you had not dropped him off at daycare or at his grandmother’s. You notice when by now he has a temperature of 40 and dry lips.

A sensor at this point also for the children in Palestine under the rubble, the ones you cannot see and cannot hear.

Like the ones under the sun inside the Audi.