As I stepped off the train in Milan Centrale, my heart pattered softly as butterfly wings. I visited Italy many times, but now, I have come to plant myself as an Italian American dual citizen. Not as a seedling, those years were gone, and I was fully formed, but rather as a reverse immigrant to propagate myself like a stem cutting in the soil of my ancestors who were driven out of Italy at the turn of the century by grim hunger and desperation, for a better life in America, toward something sharp and brilliant, like the glitter of a sword.

I can only imagine what they would say about this decision exactly a hundred years after they risked their lives, suffered stinging prejudices, and did the backbreaking labor that built America, only to watch me undo it in a single six-hour plane flight, but I had good reasons.