If it were not for sin

You are flying.

Below, a seemingly endless road leads to a lighthouse where the world ends. A pink and orange sky meets the ocean. An old man with graying black hair walks slowly while a boy and a girl run freely past him down the same lane he had walked so many times. He missed that — running, jumping and swaying to life’s rhythms with nothing else in his mind but that precise moment in which he lived. As the young kids escaped his gaze, he sighed and stopped. It had been a long time since he had lost his sight and he wore glasses which didn’t help much. He wasn’t sad or angry. He just felt bored and resigned. All he did now was take walks down that road remembering the times he had spent with him. He could almost feel his touch in the breeze. And on the rare occasions when he reached the lighthouse he uttered his name. “Oh, Luca,” he said with a chuckle full of nostalgia and resentment.

–

He sat down at an old wooden bench. The wood was rotting and the inscription signed in its back was so scraped and damaged that it only had a date, 27/08. The bench faced the port, which had once been the most important in the region but now not even amateur fishermen with cheap rods dared wait there for a creature to bite. That had never bothered him though. His town was dying but a few old friends still lived there with some young couples trying to live a more peaceful life coming in and out. He took a last glance at the ship that had just sailed and stood up. He followed the lampposts lighting the promenade and made his way home.

He threw his tired body onto the sofa and closed his eyes. The room was small and its walls were freshly painted. He was surrounded by bookshelves, enclosed by them. A confinement only broken by the small window that looked out on the bay. The dim moonlight streaming from the window lit his face and the warm breeze relaxed his body. Still, a feeling of unrest crept up on him. He had always felt safe in that space, but for the past week entering the room seemed like walking into a trap. He was on the lookout for anything that could hurt him or disturb the peace he had spent years building. It was also a long time since anyone except him had been in his study. Only Luca. He remembered the hours they would spend together. Both lost in their books and in their own minds. A shared disconnection from the world and a sense of wonder for it that seemed paradoxical — one they thought only they possessed. Silence ruled those moments and it was broken only when the sun went out and the moon showed herself. Then, they looked at each other, examining the eyes that stared back at theirs. They searched for any sign that something exceptional might have happened. Maybe they had read a line that had changed them or taught them about their own nature. However, they never shared any of their findings. They just laughed and made their way to the door. The following day, one might have wanted to talk about those newly discovered secrets. But most of the time they kept everything to themselves. Only in their eyes and their smiles could anyone guess what they hid.

He woke up the next morning. The sun blinded him and his whole body ached. He had fallen asleep there and didn’t remember having dreamt anything. Still, he couldn’t escape what had invaded his consciousness the previous night. The memory of Luca still plagued his mind. He put his hands on his face and pressed hard on his own skull. Once again, he looked back on what he had let go and resented himself for it. He had been so afraid and so unsure for so long. He knew he had betrayed himself. “Luca,” he said aloud.“Luca,” he repeated endlessly as if that would make him tangible.

–

Though incredibly sunny, it was cold so he didn’t go out to buy that day’s newspaper. Instead, he wandered around the house. With a coffee mug in his hand, he moved slowly, searching for anything that would help relieve his anxiety. Everywhere he looked, there were things he had forgotten about. Old papers, photos, notepads, and souvenirs from past travels, all thrown across the floor. A mass of memorabilia which he couldn’t be bothered to pick up or organise. He kept looking around, trying to find the right postcard or note. After a quick eternity, he identified a beaten and discolored letter. His eyes widened and his breathing stopped. The envelope was white with nothing written on it but a date, 27/08. That was some days before he had seen Luca for the last time. He sat down on the floor and held the letter in his hand for a while, until he dared to open it. He remembered the moment Luca had given it to him, the same morning he had left. He hadn’t read it in years. He opened the letter and started reading it.

I know God has given me life so I can love. And I do. That same love motivates my existence and molds my being. Still, I live in unbearable pain and I am condemned to solitude. The tremors, tics, rashes, and sensitivity to everything my senses can take in. A barrage of worry that only stops sometimes. When I let myself be vulnerable.

When the only thing my body wants is nothing at all. Just feeling you’re there.

When I’m with you I forget the world and I only feel what you make possible. What is born of your life and becomes the truest representation of mine.

I love you because I can relax and nothing is real but your eyes. I love you because thanks to you I understand what love is, and I can express it with more competence. I love you because with you I can follow my father’s words. Because you push me to find myself in others. I know that only in this way will I be able to grasp who I am. I love you because I am witness to your being. Your expressions. Your weirdness.

Without restrictions. I love you because I want more of you.

I would like to know what you get out of me, that at least I have managed to stand out and that I am worthy of you. Because a word from you cleanses me from all evil, but mine, I think, are nothing but desperate whispers, almost mute. And I am like a river dying of thirst, agonising for an unreal suffering, based on an expectation that I don’t even work to fulfil.

With you I get close to God. Not because I think of him, but because I couldn’t think of what else he could give me. I reach a state of lucidity where philosophy and reason elude me. And I don’t care since I only want to feel. But you have already helped me as much as you can. And God has made other plans for me which I wait to know. Today I prayed for you, but didn’t thank God for your existence. I struggle to understand if my thoughts of you are pure or hold me back, away from where I should be. I’d like to think of it as a gift and that I shouldn’t turn it down. But I know it’s not you that will help me satiate my need.

I’m nobody. I’m nothing. My perception of the world isolates me. God has made me a single soul. A single consciousness. Alone I will never understand myself, but that Bastard has sentenced me. He forbids me to have you.

I think of you constantly because without you I am left alone. If it were not for you there would be no world. I would be nobody. You make me. I need you. I want you to make me understand life and make me forget that I ever needed to know. To give me philosophy and abolish it in our embrace. To give me meaning and guide me to some place where I can get lost. To ignite my feelings. To liberate and restrict them at your pleasure. To give me life and take it. But you won’t. Maybe I won’t let you.

He left the letter on the floor, lost again in the pile he had just created. He looked straight ahead, at the end of the hall. He breathed in slowly with the conviction that his heart would not give in to emotion if he stayed still. As still as his life had been since the summer before college. Time passed by and his thoughts became disorganized, each clashing against the other. Unsure of what Luca had been to him, of what Luca had wanted and of what he could have done differently. Attempting to escape those thoughts, he ran to the door and went out.

–

He didn’t think. He didn’t want to. He wanted something that would never come. The past forgotten or the past relived. Neither was possible but the thought of it was so sweet. But then so sour as he met reality. He walked. He walked across the town. He walked past the old hatchery. He looked at the sea and at its tranquility. He heard laughter, young, passionate and innocent. All of those qualities he had lost came together in the warm breeze in which those kids’ hair danced chaotically but so beautifully. “Oh to be free,” he thought. He kept walking, slowly. He embraced what he had lived. And missed it so much. But he wasn’t dead yet, no? The kids ran past him and kept running to the horizon where a lighthouse rose and the land ended.

He loved that sight. The pink-orange sky. Kids embracing each other. The place he had loved since he was a kid, where all the important things had happened.

And it was only a road. He hadn’t been happier in his life than in that moment for perhaps he knew he wouldn’t live much longer.

He walked. He kept walking. He thought of him. It was painful. But he concentrated on his face. He put his palms on his cheeks. He didn’t think of a passage in their life, only that he existed. He forgot where he was. It didn’t matter. He was home. He kissed him. He felt his heart fill, and then — he didn’t feel it at all. His body was removed from him. It was glorious. He had spent years trying to get back to him. He felt desperate, empty. But in that instant, though it didn’t seem like time was even a thing, he finally found peace. He found him.

Now come fly with me.