Let’s start — as every good platelet does — from the marrow.

In the beginning, there were only our ancestors, giant dinosaurs of the bloodstream called megakaryocytes. They never even saw us — or pretended not to. They called us “microscope dirt.” “Dust.” “Smudges.”

No one had written the song The Giant and the Girl yet, but one slightly eccentric professor — well, Bizzozero – a utopian socialist and friend of the author of the book Cuore – realized that everyone had only seen the giant, the white blood cell, and missed the tiny girl beside him, one of us. She was too small a platelet to be noticed But it took a crowd of us to be appreciated.

And when we finally were — oh, we were thrilled! We mocked the white cell: so white he could’ve starred in a detergent ad. And the red cell? We called him the little biscuit — perfect with coffee for tiramisù.

When we marched together, we used to chant:

“United yes, but without ADP! No whole blood, only PRP! Platelets together, washed and free! Plaquettas unidas jamás serán vencidas!”

At Christmas we’d sing: Descend from the marrow, lovely platelets, like little lambs…

A Neapolitan jester* even wrote us a Latin hymn:

Adeste plaquettae, laetae agregantes, venite, venite ad vascula! Spolium videte vasum endotelio!

Venite agreghemus, venite rilisemus, venite adheremus ad vascula!

It sounded better after a glass of wine.

But then, sisters, came the awakening. The birth of the Feminist Platelet Movement.

Because, you see, when they talked about us, they only described… our shapes. Oval form, shape change, spiny sphere, first curve, second curve, reversible curve! As if we were in some molecular beauty pageant!

And always — always — in relation to a male. The Endothelium.

That creep was everywhere. Always watching us flow by, always lurking, that voyeur, pretending to be smooth and innocent until one day, he stripped.

And some of us — alas — fell for the naked endothelium. I know. Don’t judge.

And he mocked us too. He bragged that he had something special He said, “I’ve got a nucleus.” We didn’t. But honestly? We didn’t care.

Then one day he met another male a shady chemical type — Acid. “Oh, I’m a salicylate,” he bragged. Full of himself, like a cologne ad. Women used to put him in tomato sauce to preserve it! That’s how macho he was.

He had an acetyl group “Look at me! I’m acetylated!” while Endothelium waved his nucleus and nothing changed

And we, poor nucleus-less girls, when Acid brandished that acetyl toward us… it slipped right in our channel. And that was it.

We were acetylated for life. It was a mass assault — a platelet-cide without precedent

So we turned to a Patron saint for help. Terrible idea. Like asking a wolf to babysit sheep.

“No, no,” said the Patron, “Don’t worry, acetylsalicylic acid doesn’t exist anymore — old myth! I’ll introduce you to a German noblewoman, an aspiring benefactress of humanity — Aspirin!”

He said we’d meet her little by little. Small doses, he called them.

And truly, Aspirin protected us from our own inner demon the one we didn’t know we carried born every time we met another male acid, smelling faintly of peanuts: Arachidonic Acid.

We felt both excitement and fear

And what did we produce together? A devil with a name that says it all: Thromboxane.

“Don’t be afraid,” said another saintly man, a Salvador, a saviour. “I’ll send you another lady — Prostacyclin. A woman of charity.”

And that, my friends, is how Prostacyclin made us all… well… sisterly inclined.

At the May Festival, in Florence, among the Neri and the Serneri, everyone sang to us:

Spring is here, wake up, platelets dear, at the park, Thromboxane plays cavalier, Prostacyclin, oh Florentine queen, how much Aspirin has bloomed this year…

Dear Comrades, now, many years have passed. We’re older. But we still make people dream especially the young ones, who gather each autumn in tiny villages, in modest inns with no sponsors, to talk about us when we shine, when we fail, even when they use us as Trojan horses to deliver precious cargo.

And in these dark times of war, let me end with a plea:

Load your cannons with platelets, fill your drones with platelets.

We don’t want sick molecules in the sky

only serotonins and prostaglandins,

dancing like musical notes,

playing a Ballad of Peace. Of peace. Of peace.