Sauce on my cheek, sun on my chest

Hien Mindy Nguyen
Jun 10
4 min read

I arrived in Naples just after the world started breathing again-November 2022. The year the stillness cracked open. I was supposed to feel free. It was my first solo trip in years. I had a husband, a house, a family. From the outside, I was lucky. From the inside, I was disappearing.

Italy wasn’t new to me, but Naples was a different kind of language-one I didn’t yet speak, but already knew in my bones. A clash of ancient stones and spray-painted prayers. It was loud and messy and pulsing with something I hadn’t felt in a long time: aliveness.

Alessandro, my Airbnb host, picked me up at the airport with a crooked smile and stories in a language I didn’t understand. But kindness needs no translation. He drove like a man dancing with the road, narrating the city like it was a lover he wanted me to meet properly. And oh- Naples was that kind of lover. Wild. Honest. Untamed.

The city hit me all at once. Motorbikes weaving like wind. Horns, voices, church bells, seagulls. The smell of salt and street food and something burning. Naples doesn’t walk you in gently. It throws its arms around you and says: Wake up.

But I didn’t. Not fully.

For days, I wandered the city like a ghost in a body I barely recognized. I was at my heaviest weight. My skin felt tight around a version of me I no longer felt connected to. I saw myself in reflections- shop windows, café mirrors- and flinched. My brain told me I was in a happy marriage. But something deeper knew I wasn’t even in myself.

I was tired. Not sleepy-tired. Spirit-tired.

Naples didn’t ask me to be beautiful or put together. It didn’t ask me to smile or explain. It just was, and I just was. That was the miracle of it. A city that accepted mess. That mirrored mine.

History breathed through every broken wall. The buildings peeled like aging skin, and still-stood. I saw old women hanging laundry like small rebellions, men gesturing poetry with their hands, children kicking balls across cobblestones. Life here didn’t whisper. It screamed. And it was beautiful.

And the pizza.

I wasn’t even a pizza person. But Naples doesn’t ask. It offers. So I folded a slice the size of my face and bit in- and something split open. Sauce on my cheek, sun on my chest. The crust blistered with woodfire, the tomato sweet like memory, the mozzarella a softness I didn’t know I needed. I moaned without apology. For once, I let my body have the moment without shame.

I walked and walked. Past crumbling palazzos, past fishermen yelling at the sea. I let the sound of my boots on stone be the only rhythm I needed. I wasn’t chasing meaning. I was letting the city hold me. And it did.

One morning, I took a tour to the Amalfi Coast. Window seat. Sun spilling over everything. The cliffs curved like questions I hadn’t asked yet. Lemon trees clung to the earth like hope. And for a breathless second, I imagined a life- quiet, soft, maybe just mine. A house with ocean air. A laundry line. Coffee with no one but the waves. That dream was born there. Whispered, not declared.

That same day, I tried limoncello for the first time. It burned and sparkled. Like truth. Like something sharp that wakes you gently. I laughed out loud, startled by the joy of it. Naples didn’t mind. It holds space for whatever you’re feeling. You can cry here. You can laugh too loud. You can be undone and no one will flinch.

That night, I found a trattoria tucked into a corner of the world. Just a few tables, a candle, a bowl of ragù that felt like someone’s grandmother was telling me I’d survive. I didn’t speak. I didn’t need to. I just sat there, letting food and silence fill the ache I hadn’t named.

It wasn’t until I got home and looked back at the photos that I saw it- how far gone I was. The smile on my face didn’t reach my eyes. My body looked foreign. I couldn’t believe I had let so much of myself go missing. But even in that disconnect, there was grace. Because Naples had held that version of me without judgment. Let her taste joy. Let her breathe.

Naples didn’t save me.

But it saw me.

Before I saw myself.

I didn’t leave the city reborn. This wasn’t the before-and-after story. I still had to go home to the unraveling. Still had to face the mirror and the truth and the silence of a marriage I no longer fit inside.

But something shifted.

Not loud. Not dramatic.

Just enough to whisper:

You’re still here.

I don’t think Naples meant to love me. But it did.

In the way it made space for chaos.

In the way it didn’t ask me to be anything other than a woman with sauce on her cheek and sun in her chest.

And someday, I’ll go back.

Maybe lighter in body, yes - but mostly, lighter in spirit.

Maybe with lemon trees of my own.

A quiet balcony.

A life where nothing has to be perfect to feel holy.