XXXIII

She had just left, the afternoon was passing and the sun was threatening to leave the sky any minute. He would be moved as soon as it got dark. He wouldn't even be under his own roof, he would die without love, without her.

And with two companions, two friends, on his conscience.

How many times he had said that alone would be better, now he was alone and he didn't feel any better, maybe because he wasn't prepared, maybe because once you get used to the noise, the laughter and the chatter, then it's hard to go back to solitude.

But the solitude right now was the only thing that fulfilled him. With people around trying to help him, he would have suffered only half, but he wanted to live all that pain, he wanted to go through it as if it were an intense and black cloud and he wanted to let himself be invested and feel full, as if his body was absorbing more and more of it. And that was okay. If he was in pain it meant that there was still life, that there was hope. Being well now would mean that something was long gone, that life no longer affected him.

Everything was fine as it was.

What was the point of staying together if, despite all the love, they were unfulfilled?

In a world of improprieties he had proven himself no better, she on the other hand had been a warm breath in the midst of icy winds, significant, but not enough to change the situation.

In that room, confused enough not to understand, he had thought he really loved her, loved her as if she were a poem, with the same intensity with which one venerates a work of art, and perhaps it was there that he had realized it was over.

He had to run away, leave before she did and leave his heart in shambles.

Now she could have written a new story, read yet another poem, without thinking of the coldness of his gaze that sought its warmth in the arms of other women. Not even knowing this she had left him, but he bet she had never forgotten.

What was love to her? Going far together? Or just running around aimlessly? After all, what did it matter where they were headed?

He smiled bitterly.

But what running, he had only been able to wrap his hands around her neck, killing her by suffocating her while she cried out for love. And why he didn't even know, he didn't even want to wonder, the only thing he wondered was what would be left of the two of them in that world, if everything was destined to end like that.

He leaned his back against the brick wall and turned his head to look out of his cell. It didn't even have a small window. Nothing through which air could pass to allow him to breathe other than his melancholy.

I wonder if she would ever think of him again. Yes, probably in her moments of despair, when prince Luka will no longer give her what she needs, when her life will hold her in a suffocating grip, she will think back to him, to their moments together and to what made her happy and free. Maybe even with her groom by her side, in their opulent marriage bed, maybe on their first night together, maybe while he was worrying so much about making her enjoy herself.

No, she couldn't think about those things, not knowing she was going to die. She just wished she could have sped up the process.

Still, he thought, it would be strange to be thought of by her, not after what he had done to her, but maybe what they had been was more important than his own bullshit.

After all, everything in the world is useful. All the lives you cross can leave you something, some with sincere smiles and some with pain, but all in all, without pain, how do you remember being alive?

He only asked to be for her one of those permanent pains, that you can keep at bay, there in a hidden corner of your heart, but that you know exists, is there and sometimes hurts more than usual but then returns to its place and you can continue to live as you see fit.

He wanted, every time he heard "forever", to think back to when they whispered it softly between the exhausted blankets and to think about how nice it was to dream, even with his days numbered. He wanted to not be remembered for the many mistakes, but because he had been different from every person who had ever looked at her and still thought he was important.

He wanted her to move on with her life but to realize how difficult it was to replace him.

But now it was too late to think about that. He couldn't even talk to her anymore.

All he had left now were the memories and their bittersweet taste in his mouth.

And regrets, God how many he had.

But he thought he had to be content, to be at least happy to have been part of her life, even if only for a short while, to have made her understand what love was and what it meant to truly love, to have made her live for real.

He sighed as he heard the sound of the guards coming heavily down the stairs in their nice uniforms.

If only she could have stopped her life on one of those nights, like it was just one long dream.

Q his was the punishment for hurting the pride of a princess, a creature of God, the beloved. This and being thought of by her, from here to eternity, as the one who had hurt her.

Whenever something or someone would break her pride, she would always think of him.

And what was the right excuse?

Would her thoughts ever escape to reach him?

The sun had probably barely set. Strange how some individuals classify this as a new beginning, a new day, for him the sunset brought new dramas, the sun went away and left him alone in the night, he hoped it would come back, but the more he asked it to retrace its steps the more it seemed to ignore him and there appeared in the sky yet another crooked moon watching him drown in his mistakes and berating himself as if he was the only one in the world making them.

Was feeling lost in her eyes that important? Maybe just the fact that the rest no longer existed in those moments, that the center of every night was her.

Could she hear his thoughts through the floor and the walls that kept them apart? It was ridiculous to be so close but to feel her so far away, she who guarded his heart and mind, who despite everything to think of her had chills.

Inside every emotion she had left chills in him. He wondered if he had also been able to give her these sensations.

And now his heart was completely turned off as he slowly erased the painful memories of good times, of when she revealed to him all the secrets of her soul, of when she confessed that she thought it strange that she knew so little about her own people.

He had seen her pretend to be well and he had drowned in a sea of fake and bad elegance.

Was it so important?

What was important if everything was dominated by chaos? If it was love that commanded and decided which way to go, whether to help two lovers or to transform them, what importance had the right and normal course of a real life? And now only the shadow was left, in his mind an enormous void, gone were all the times he had kissed his fate for fear of being betrayed by what tomorrow hid from him and all because she was there and tomorrow was no longer so scary if she illuminated it smiling.

Was it important for her to understand that she was looking at someone with very deep wounds and that it had been impossible to heal them until that first kiss?

Had she even tried to understand? If not, it would be devastating for him to realize otherwise, and every second that passed in which she held him out of her heart was one more bruise in their love.

He heard the sound of needles and heavy footsteps. The time had come.