C opens the gate for us. We enter the villa. The windows are boarded up. It’s dark and cold inside. Marble floors, wooden furniture pushed against the walls. Pigeon bones on the dusty stone floor of the attic. A life left behind.

The place could be a movie set. Tucked away in the hills and the heat. On the wall, a framed certificate, letter-pressed and adorned with ornaments, speaks of the glory of the last century and a family story of people I will never meet. What remains are imagined dinners and parties, lives, love stories, fights, illnesses, and tears. I have a creeping feeling that I should not be here, and that all of this will be sold and gone very soon.

Those summer weeks in Italy blend together: the scorching heat, the shooting stars at night. Days running through the city with my friends, late-night dinners on the farm, driving along winding gravel roads, mosquito bites, daily ice cream, and soft kisses in lavender fields. M showing T and me the Duomo at night, when the city is quiet and the masses of tourists have retreated to their hotels, beauty everywhere. Y’s and my bet (which she won).

T’s endless, incredibly endearing patience with Raka, the green parrot we were asked to take care of for a few days. I play her “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from my iPhone Mini, because it is allegedly her favourite song. I hope it reminds her of A, and I hope she knows she will not be abandoned forever.

M raises his glass and toasts to me. We are sitting on his parents’ balcony with a view over Florence, the moon faint in the distance. He winks, and I know we are both revelling in the surreal nature of that moment. We both feel as though we finally have everything we ever dreamed of.

From time to time, I try to think back to the villa and that summer. “You know, some people just can’t visualise their thoughts. It’s called aphantasia,” my friend M says, sipping a Vermouth Spritz. Suddenly, everything makes sense. She is putting into words what I have felt my entire life. When I close my eyes, everything loses its contours. The feeling remains, but the sharpness is gone. No matter how hard I try, I forget the faces of lovers and loved ones. I cannot fully see the places I visit. My dreams are more feeling than scene. When I close my eyes, I can’t even properly imagine something as simple as an apple.

Last week, someone remarked that my work seems to touch on what I cannot have: the borzois, the water lilies, access to Versailles. In some sense, Aphantasia is inspired by the indescribable feeling of not being able to form visual thoughts or memories. It is inspired by that last summer in Italy, by falling in love, and by imagination.