The Letters...

Dear Ms Nixie, Buiongiorno, Come stai? I heard of your letters from the time-travelling tourists around my parts and wondered if you might offer me a good spot of advice? I was never anybody special. I was a common girl who happened to find myself in the studio of a great artist one fine November afternoon sitting on a Rock selling flowers in the middle of the piazza. He asked me for a bunch or two and looking sideways with the sun in one eye I suppose it must have captured the man’s attention and god only knows why. He asked me to sit for him. My name is Mona Lisa. I came back to see what all the fuss was about, crossed over from the past to here and now and what about it? What the dickens is going on? All of them lining up in the great gallery to see my picture. Nobody cared a scrap when I was a peasant. Now all of them have a price tag attached to my lips. There’s blooming cups and pencil cases. There’s tea towels and all manner of printed tees. I was a lonely girl. I was the s