This was our second trip to Tuscany. It was October, during harvest. The ‘97 Chiantis were ready and I remember how the wine warmed my throat and numbed my senses. It should have been romantic.

We were in Florence on our last day and eager to try one more restaurant. We picked one out of our dog eared travel guide, though we had traveled enough to know better. But, we weary.

It was raining as we tried to find our way to the little trattoria. The rain flooded the stone streets making the slippery trek seem like creek crossing. We were the first to arrive at “Cibreo.” It was noon and only Americans are hungry at noon. We waited in the rain for the doors to open. We were too American or too polite, so as the locals started arriving, we gradually ceded our position until we were the last in line. When the doors finally opened, we were the last to be seated at a tiny table next to the kitchen. We ordered table wine and made sarcastic remarks about the loud Americans across the room. But, we remained polite to the waiter. Polite to each other.

I ordered some sort of pollo. I’m usually adventurous with food. Earlier in our trip I had joked that I had eaten all of Beatrix Potter’s creatures. I had sampled rabbit, wild boar, pigeon, eel, frog legs among other edibles. And, I had enjoyed them all. So, chicken hardly seemed the risky choice. But, when the waiter brought my food, I was shocked by what I saw. Amid a smattering of chives and lemon garnish, was an entire chicken head, complete with eyes, comb and bits of hair. The stench indicated that it was in a late stage of decomposition. It was a carcass, after all. And, I wasn’t going to eat it.

We laughed together for the first time in months as we contemplated whether this was some kind of joke that the chef enjoyed playing on naive tourists. Tourists that we were, we snapped some photos of the plate to archive our amusement.

This was the last photo we took in Italy. There were no pictures of us together. We never thought to ask fellow tourists to take our picture. Instead, we commemorated our journey with this photo of a lone, dead chicken head, on a white plate. It was very William Carlos Williams in its objectivism...”so much depends on a dead chicken head on a white plate...”

So much depends on firsts and lasts. Beginnings and endings. It was our last meal on our last day in Italy. And, it was the beginning of the end of our marriage.

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