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They usually come back to see me in early September, but I can feel how much they missed me. Scent of cars, beer, fried food and people's laughter. Generally you don't hear me speak, I'm a not too big esplanade of gray tiles; 328 days a year a parking lot and the remaining 37 a bit of everything. In my life I have met millions of feet, yes feet, and for most of them I am a bit like coming home. They played on me, laughed, cried, complained about the world, fell in love with strange types and someone even wrote songs, as if I were something important. I live close enough to the center to be often forgotten and this I believe is my greatest strength. One life within another: more energetic, faster, noisy ... while I stay here, tired but always happy, in recent years a little fatter due to the sweets and ice creams that have fallen to the ground. I don't have fountains, trees that can provide shade, decent planters. The ramp they built (the newest thing in the neighborhood) is a canvas for the neighborhood cans and the street behind here stinks of forgotten space, yet, inexplicably, they all come back, always. Of those 37 days, 8 I am occupied by a stage, each year smaller and each time more full. They jump, dance and approach again feet that live 100 meters away and forget it. There is a girl with skinny feet, who has been running on me since she wore the 24 of shoes and now comes back every time to complain about the exams, here in those cases I would like to send her away, but it would not be courteous, for better or for worse now it is in the family. And after all, sooner or later, whether I want it or not, everyone goes away, looking for new wonderful places to walk. After all they are just an old suburban square, but forever their city within the city.

Chiara Silenus.