When I was child, taking the metro was for me an extraordinary event. I always lived on the edge of the city, about twenty kilometres from the centre of Rome as the crow flies, and at least one hour and half by car. We went to the city centre only for important things: for medical examinations, to sign a certificate.
I liked to take the metro. For me it was like travelling by train. It seemed so damn fast, as it was flying on the rails and inside the dark. I liked the smell of it too, made of plastic and oil.
And then, when I was 16, the metro became the symbol of my freedom. I didn..t have any car, so it was the only way to move. On Saturdays with my friends I was used to take the A line of the metro to Piazza di Spagna to pull the birds. I used it with the one I called The Violinist, my first boy friend. I never attended Rome so much as when I flirted with him. We were kids, and we loved to pretend that Rome was our. I wrote so many pages about my city, picturing it like a matronal and rouged mother, and I was so glad to be its daughter. A metro to go to swim, a metro to go to the restaurant, a metro all week-ends long. I was happy when it was packed, in the evening, ..cause me and my boyfriend could press ourselves one against the other. I laughed everytime when I was sitting on his legs.
I caught the B line of the metro to go to FAO, for almost two years. I worked in the Youth Forum, and I was so silly proud to be doing something so small, so infinitesimal to change the world. The metro stop was Circo Massimo. I got off with the flood of gentlemen with briefcases and black dresses. Every time I went out I saw Terme di Caracalla, and every time after that I went to FAO with a pompous air.
The day that me and Giuliano started our relationship we caught the A metro. We went to Villa Borghese to roll around on the grass. I remember him standing in front of me, on the metro coach, leaned on the handrail, smiling at me. I hided my smile behind a rose. We knew we had a secret, that no one else knew. We were flirting, and no one knew.
Then, it finished. I never caught that frequently the metro any more. I use it only when I travel for work, and in this case I catch it in Tiburtina, and get off at Termini.
The Metro is always packed. The Metro is always late. The Metro is a chocked up vein, pumping too much blood. The Metro is a trap that could imprison me, the metro horribly hoots, and cover my iPod music, the metro smells, and is hot of stranger bodies and breath.
Last time I got off at Vittorio Emanuele, it was to buy something for the Jack Sparrow costume. Me and Giuliano stayed for a while in the park in the centre of the square, and I looked for my book in one of the stand were there. I don..t even remember how the metro stop Vittorio Emanuele seems like.

It..s nasty to feel Roman only when tragedies happen. To know that Rome is an umbilical cord that you would never broke, ..cause everything happens in your city, to everyone, it happens to you too. ..It could happen to me.. you think, even if you never use the metro. You think back, as I did today, and your hands shake a little as you reload online newspapers page to know why it happens, how it happens, and to hear the bells ringing for your city.

It seems that all cities sooner or later has to pay a blood price. An ever too high and senseless price, both if are other men that spill it or if it was just chance, fate. And there are a thousand reasons for what happens yesterday in Rome, and people like me that live in Rome know them. But sometimes I think that cities will all end buried in their own greatness, physical or moral, and they will succumb to what they..ve become.