Chapter 1
A trace of your kiss floats millimeters away from my lips, ghosted, never to be sailed.
It carries a promise, washed away by time and soaked in centuries your eyes used to swear upon. We lived in a place where time was more of a playground than a rule. So we fooled around, thinking our moms won’t notice that we’ve spent a little too many dawns kissing the grass somewhere far, far away from our original grounds. They promised time heals, not hurts. They promised it will be enough, if it’s spent well.
Then it started raining, one of the following eternities. Diamonds dripping from the stars. It was magical, breathtaking, yet they cut deep into our skin leaving marks that shall forever now follow us through our journeys.
One day, just before I leave, those will hurt again. Just to remind us of who we are and that when we cried, we cried in company.
Surrounded by unfamiliar faces, lost in the crowd of someone else’s mind and utterly desperate in a city full of love, but not mine, somehow unknown, I was supposed to feel the lonliest I’ll ever feel.
You brought home to me, that night.
Soaking wet on some scary, long streets and voiceless, trembling, kneeling before a stranger’s touch, I was lost. You came. Just like that, and walked up to me, without a word. Without an umbrella, yet it felt like a roof to be under. Without any comfort, yet you somehow felt safe.
Because you looked at me that way, like you knew that we were supposed to overgrow something heavy arm in arm.
You never held galaxies in your eyes. Nor the ocean. Nor any of those things people would like that I write about. But they treasured something, to me, much more valuable, much more beautiful.
They were the colour of time, and when you look at them, you get lost, thinking of all the memories that you’re yet to discover. They were warm and managed to make me feel at home. I thought, for a moment, that maybe you were the one I was always bound to fall in love with. Your smile erased all the pain, and it wears such softness to it that I’ve never seen before.
I couldn’t help but dwell. Your soul oozes such wonders. Frankly I do believe that people with the most power in the world are the muses, that somehow manage to steal an artist’s breath away, along with their souls, bearing in mind that an artist’s souls is quite so big and hard to take away silently. An artist without a soul is simply a blank page of paper, although sometimes, the most beautiful blankness you’ll ever get to land your eyes upon.
You left me, for days, or years as it seemed, wordless. Until you though me how to speak.
We grew, barefoot with some sand beneath our steps, leaving prints that are soon doomed to be washed away with the cries of the ocean. Danced and flew and did everything kids should do, even though we pretended to be all grown, without the intention of ever coming back.
Home.
Home feels weird now. I never doubted, not even once while I was with you, that I am already there.
Maybe that’s why to me it seemed like time was never a rule, but simply an idea to think about, sometime later. You showed me so much, without ever leaving the street we met in. That street to me holds the smell of childhood, even though I never actually lived there. With you by my side, I was born anew. Maybe that’s why I decided that hours hold no meaning.
Then it started raining again.
All muddy and shaking, universe’s tears falling down my face, I should’ve hugged you. I should have had a watch on my wrist to tell me I’ll be late for a tomorrow.
I should have known that those types of rains that you can feel within your spirit, don’t fall because of the nature. It’s the sky crying for you and your ignorance to what is bound to happen. It’s the stars saying they’re sorry. It’s the clouds angrily warning you that you should’ve payed more attention.
I’m sorry I dissappointed them, but somehow, no matter how familiar you seem, I got lost, a tiny bit, in you too. I got distracted thinking I wouldn’t let it happen. Yet I did.
Baciami adesso, anche se piove.
And we parted, thinking, days bleed, but we don’t. Thinking we’re too young to know to love. Thinking we have time.
You should’ve kissed me goodbye.
For the next day, I was far, far away, without a return ticket to my Neverland. For the following dawn, I spent under my own sky, looking at something so familiar, surrounded by everything I should already know by heart, yet I’ve never felt quite so alone. The world left me frased and everything I touched felt cold underneath my figertips. Strangeness overwhelmed me entirely.
The home that you brought me that night;
It still awaits, in the same street, under the same broken lights.
I hope you haven’t left, by the time I come back. I’m bringing you a goobye.
