Ricordi di moi

“Colmar was the first story my soul ever whispered. To others, a fairy-tale town; to me, a heartbeat steady, eternal, woven into the very air I breathed.”

At dawn, the boulangerie filled the air with Luca’s parents’ bread warm, sweet, rising with the sun. The houses leaned close over cobblestone streets, pastel walls mirrored in quiet canals. Lilacs spilled from garden walls, lanterns swayed above bridges, and the water carried everything laughter, music, even secrets whispered in the dark. Colmar did not forget. It remembered.

Luca belonged here completely. His smile was as gentle as the mornings, his hands dusted in flour, his presence steady as bread in the oven. With him, Colmar felt like home safe, warm, unchanging.

Adrien was the opposite. He came like a storm, his motorcycle shattering the stillness, his leather jacket sharp against the pastel houses. He did not belong, and yet he returned again and again, as though even Colmar could not let him go.

I remember one dusk clearly sugar clinging to my fingertips from Luca’s croissant, when Adrien’s bike slowed at the bridge, his gaze burning in the fading light. Two boys, two worlds, both carried by the same town.

The spring fairs shimmered with ribbons, music, and lanterns on the water. I drifted between them Luca’s soft steadiness, Adrien’s restless fire until my heart no longer knew where it belonged.

Childhood in Colmar was never simple. It was bread and lilacs, engines and shadows, laughter on cobblestones and secrets hidden in canals. And through it all, Colmar held me, shaping every first every joy, every ache, every beginning.

This is not only a memory.

It is a confession.

Because Colmar remembers and so do I.

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