Written on the walls

“I love poetry!” she used to say to me, all the time. Every single day of the week, every time I stumbled upon her, she would churn out beautiful lines like these. Then, with the usual sullen look in her face, she would correct herself involuntarily; “I love your poetry, you know! Not just poetry in general!” she gave a kiss at my cheek and left. And behind her figure, ruins, ruins, ruins. I was inexhaustibly in love with her. The very shadow that emerged from her well-formed body, her moves, the way her fingers caressed the ground and the sound her lips made when she touched my cheek, everything pertaining to her was just unrivaled. She was a very, very powerful wind, a vento (oh, how she used to retrieve all her knowledge of Italian vocabulary, she tried to pronounce words she has not pronounced in ages! I never had the courage or the attitude to tell her how funnily her lips moved when she tried to pronounce Italian words), a force that even if you painstakingly attempted to resist it, it swarmed over you, your existence, your essence, your longings and ambitions, and managed to conquer you, and reduce you to mindless, blindfolded obedience. Yet, you still lusted over becoming a part of her collection of tormented, fatigued hearts. I could give up everything had she implored me to. I could figure out multiple, imaginative ways to kill myself had she wanted to make a piece of art out of my death.
One day, she walked up to me and told me how extraordinarily exquisite my poetry was. I was enthralled once again by her choice of words. She carefully picked the words that would make me beg on my knees for a reassurance of my existence in her universe. She told me every single day how much she wanted to have poems written about her, by my hand. Oh, how little she knew! I had scribbled an insurmountable number of stanzas dedicated to her. I never had the nerve to show her how my artsy self felt about her.
“I want poetry about me!” she yelled with a joyful look in her face. People thought her drunk, but she was more sober than most. This elation was natural to her. She did not have to add alcohol to her words. She was an exuberant, high-spirited, funny person by nature. This is the main reason why I adored her. Her eyes had a different sort of gleam every time you gazed into them. They always reflected a different kind of abyss. And this abyss penetrated you.
“I will write poetry about you all over town” I said, intoxicated with amore. She looked at me for a moment and laughed from the bottom of her heart. “No, you won’t!” She offered her regular kiss at my cheek and abandoned the debris of my heart longing for another one. Her disbelief motivated me all the more. I wanted to prove to her what I could do, what I was capable of.
I wrote poetry, lines, drawings, faces and balloon hearts looking for their owners in the streets. On public, private properties, on everything that could be used as a surface for art. Elaborately, carefully, diligently, I scribbled lines for her. Not only my lines, no. There so many immense poets before me that illustrated female beauty in more imaginative and erotic ways. My work was insufficient to describe spectacular miracles of nature. Every single corner of this gray, industrial town was painted with love, with immense, immobilizing, laborious love. The kind of love that blooms even in the gloomiest of areas all around the globe and creates a depressing contrast with all the sadness and the misery emanating from these corners of the world. This was my love.
“I will write poetry about you all over town” I said. But what I truly wanted to say was, “I will write poetry about you, everywhere. I will write poetry on your arms. I will write poetry in the walls of the most squalid building you have ever observed. I will write poetry on every cement surface of this town, and let a flower hesitatingly bloom from the spot on which my words silently lie. And this flower will exist only for you…for your blissful smile.”

Bits and Pieces

My soul is everywhere in this town. Bits and pieces of my most secret thoughts lie in its streets, reflect themselves in the water of the melancholic, sudden, cleansing autumn rain. In the background, you can hear the Smiths singing "Asleep"..."Sing me to sleep...sing me to sleep...don't try to wake me in the morning 'cause I will be gone...". Nothing's gone. Everything is still here. The stain on the clothes, the broken window, the dusty old books lying idlely on the floor. Everything that happened here is waking up, brought back from the dead, rejuvenates and sits opposite of me, reminding me of its constant presence and effect on my routine.

When I lay my body on the bed, I'm trying to think of stories that bring a smile to my face. Stories that I can tell and be glad to narrate. Stories that are only bright-colored, with touches of gold and silver and exquisite beauty. Suddenly, the world caves in. I can feel a thousand people lying in beds like me, and thinking about stories, memories, events so selfishly bound to our minds, so inevitably important for our future. All these people, like me, recollect bad stories as well. Sad stories ,full of gloom, full of darkness. Not everything we have is showered in light. Without dark, there would be no light. What is light? The mere absence of dark. Without the one, the other ceases to exist. Beauty cannot exist without ugliness. Beautiful memories would be a waste of time without the ugly ones. We collapse but we get back up. This is the magic of being a human; one has to constantly deal with the contrasts of life; the painfull challenges and the enchanting triumphs. The essence of life.

It's night and I cannot get any sleep. I can hear the wind blowing outside and a million leaves landing on my balcony. The melancholy of autumn, the serenity of the night, the reluctant light that sneaks in my bedroom are enough to fill my mind with thoughts, assumptions, dreams, hopes. I capture my own mind dreaming of what it could be, living in hypotheses. I'm addicted to hypotheses. They offer me this uncomparable feeling of change, this feeling that someday, things aren't going to be the same as they are now, on his dead hour of this still night. I know, that one day, I won't be lying here, on this bed, addicted to my dreams and trapped in my stable life. I will be somewhere else, discussing, or just staring at the sky. Simple moments matter, because they are enough to rejuvenate the lost joy and hope.

I live among assumptions and hopes and dreams. But there is a certain thing I promised to myself and I will never break this promise. This promise is the meaning of life, the reason why I'm still fighting. I made a promise to myself; I will never, ever play the role of a mere spectator of my own life. I will be the protagonist, I will shape it, I will make it the way I want it to be. This is the core of life, the hidden treasure of it; not let it pass before your eyes, like a movie, but direct it yourself.