Crossroads

   Usually, Norma ate pizza on Friday nights. But it wasn’t the norm that she ate it in a car, as she was doing now, next to her friend Beatrice. Bea had convinced her to do some spying, as she thought her boyfriend was actually not in a “football party” with his buds, but with another women. She was sure of it and had been nagging Norma about it for at least two weeks. So she finally came up with the idea of following him all around town if it was necessary in order to know what was the truth. Norma had only convinced her to take a tomato and cheese pizza with them and at least let her hear some music from time to time. She loved Bea and would never leave her alone but Friday nights were sacred, no matter if it was pizza in bed or partying till dawn.

 Anyway, they parked outside his house and followed him once he got out of there. He took the bus a few blocks away from his home and then they had to follow the bus, which was the most annoying thing ever as it had stops every two blocks and apparently the route was very long. Bea just kept saying she didn’t know any friends of her boyfriend that lived around there, but Norma didn’t really pay attention. She just enjoyed her pizza and the fact that she had found a really good radio station, with every song being amazing. When the boyfriend got off the bus, they followed him for four blocks until he entered a building and there was no way to seeing him for some time. Bea decided to call him right then.

 Norma, bored out of her mind, look around the neighborhood. It wasn’t the nicest place on Earth but it wasn’t too bad to be honest. There were some people walking around, mainly couples, possibly walking to the subway or the bus stop in order to get downtown, where most of the clubs and party places where. Norma didn’t really like to go to clubs unless she was feeling really depressed or something. Otherwise, it was too loud and too “happy” for her. Then, she saw a man sitting on a bench, a few meters behind them, talking to himself pointing at things that weren’t there and looking very worried about something. The guy was actually rather young and not ugly at all.

 Bea scared Norma with her elbow, trying to get her attention. Her boyfriend had told her he was at his friend’s house and that the game was about to start. She was holding her cellphone very tightly and asked Norma to look for games that were happening that night. She needed to know if that part was a lie or not. Norma complied but, once in a while, she looked outside to the man talking to himself. After not finding anything about a game, she told Bea she was thirsty because of all the slices of pizza she had eaten so she needed to get to a supermarket or something. Bea looked at her with annoyance but Norma told her she had seen a store a few blocks back so she could go in a second.

 After stepping out of the car, Norma felt the night was warm and just perfect. Summer wasn’t in yet but it could be felt in the air. She walked slowly, having no urgency to get back to the car. She passed by the man talking to himself and stopped right there for a moment, hoping to hear what he was talking about but it wasn’t very clear. He said something about an animal, some kind of farm animal, and then he switched to bombs and nuclear warfare or something like that. Then, the man kind of jumped in his seat and turned around, looking at her. He kept moving his head and hands but didn’t say a word as he checked her out. Norma just turned around and walked a bit faster towards the store, only thinking about the beautiful chestnut colored eyes that crazy guy had.

 The store was very empty and only a young Asian woman was there as the cashier. She was reading a magazine and the TV was turned on somewhere in he store. Norma walked around slowly, as she didn’t want to go back so soon. Bea could really get annoying with all of her boyfriend stud and Norma had no opinion about it all. So what if he was cheating on her? It wouldn’t be the first time a guy does that to a woman. And besides, they had just being together for six months. It was better to find out now that in two years or something. Norma was just a good friend but sometimes being that good was a very demanding job.

 She kept walking through the aisles until she remembered why she had come in for: something to drink. So she grabbed a bottle of ice tea and also some gum, hard candy and a women’s magazine if the night turned to be one of those long evenings with her best friend. When she was around the ice-cream freezer, the door of the store opened but she didn’t turned around to see who it was. However, the cashier was apparently not very pleased to see that person come in because she was telling him to leave and to get lost and many other things. He had a bit of a stutter, trying to respond to the woman, and Norma realized who it was: the guy from the bench, the one of the chestnut eyes.

 She walked up to the cashier and asked her to let him in, as she wanted to help him by buying him something to eat. The cashier looked at her as if she had become insane in front of her eyes but finally complied. Norma bought the man one of those microwave noodle soups. She heat it up on the machine behind the cashier and then paid all of her shopping and, with difficulty, she got out and walked up to the crazy guy and gave him the soup. It was incredible to see, as she got her stuff in order, how his eyes had lit up just because of some soup. It was boiling hot but he ate fast and she was surprised to see a smile when he was done. Norma smiled back.

 She then tried to get her name but the man wouldn’t say a word. It was hard to know if he couldn’t say anything or if he didn’t wanted to, but anyway, the soup had been a nice gesture and Norma was glad she could do that for someone. She turned around and started walking to Bea’s car but then the guy took her arm, a little too strongly, and started to tell her about nuclear bombs and how the world would end. He was talking so fast, it made her a little bit dizzy and the fact that he was pressing on her forearm with such strength was nothing to be amused by either. Like out of some kind of hypnosis, Norma pulled her arm out of his grip and told him to be nice or she would call the police. Then, as if that had been a code of sorts, he looked at her and begged her not to call the police.

 His voice right then was calm and rational. His eyes, hands and body in general had stopped moving awkwardly and he was just staring at Norma. She told him she wouldn’t call them but that he needed to learn not to treat people like that, especially when they have just bought him some soup. He asked her for forgiveness, as most of the time he was not really in control of anything, not his body or his mind or his mouth. He had lost control over himself long ago and now he just drifted around the world, trying to make sense of a life that seemed like a dream. He spoke so eloquently, that it was difficult for Norma not to walk up to him and just look at his face with a bit of regret.

 She then asked why was he living on the streets. Again, his face seemed to change in a second but his words kept their sense and she could understand everything he was saying. According to him, he had been a very good student in a physics laboratory not very far from there. He had helped all his teachers in various experiments and had even done some research on his own theories too. But then some guy, some teacher that was supposed to be his mentor and a great mind in the scientific community, he just stole every single idea his student had come up with. And as he was such a brilliant guy, every single one of his theories was proved to be right and it changed a lot in their field.

 This kept going for a while until the student accused the teacher to the board of the institute but they wouldn’t hear him. They thought it was one of those young people that are so obsessed with discovering something or being important, that they would invent anything in order to be considered into the scientific community. This had a very bad effect on the student’s mind, as he was already a patient for a number of mental illnesses. He wasn’t well at all and even confessed to Norma that he should have never being there in the first place, but life always has its ways. Suddenly, Norma’s cellphone rang. It was Bea, nothing had happened and she wanted to leave.

 Norma promised the guy, who said his name was Stuart, to come back and help him some more, with anything he might need. He told Norma that she had already done enough with the soup and by hearing his story. They shook hands and separated. Norma thought of him all the way to the car and more than night. Bea didn’t ask her where she had been; she just theorized what her perfect boyfriend was doing in his football party. As they drove away from the building, on a way of the fourth floor, it was clearly visible how the boyfriend was there all right, but naked and having sex with his friend. The game was on the screen.

The Donner mansion

   For the last hundred years, people had stated that the Donner mansion was haunted. People claimed ghost lived there and that’s why people never went there anymore. Professor Marcus Stevens and his assistant Vanessa arrived in town just to check out the mansion, in order to put to rest the legend of the so-called ghosts. Professor Stevens was not a believer of the supernatural and was decided, in his spare time; to debunk any silly beliefs people might still have around the globe. He had chosen the Donner mansion because it was a very well known place, not only in the region but nationwide. People talked about how real the experiences there were and the professor wanted to end all of that.

 To be honest, he had personal reasons. Silly beliefs had left his grandfather helpless. When he was younger, his grandpa was suffering from a strange disease. He asked his mother and practically everyone in the family to take him to the hospital but they wouldn’t, saying it was the will of God and that if He intended grandpa to be cured, it would be done that way.  Even as a child, Marcus was restless, even trying to sneak into the house a doctor he had picked up from the phone book. But to no avail, as his parents forbid it and his grandpa died days later.

 When he grew up, he decided to study science and prove everything, make the world a more realistic place, getting rid of all the magical creatures, the folk tales and the silly beliefs that took lives like his grandfather’s every single day around the world. Since he was eighteen, he had left home and didn’t talk to any family member but he soon made lots of friends in the scientific circles, so there was no sadness or longing for the past. He hated his pasts, his family’s beliefs and all that had to do with that. He decided he could live very well without his parents or anyone else from his family close to him.

 The first thing they did was travelling to the town of Rensal, where the mansion was locate, and talk to many people there. The idea was to make something like a survey, in order to better understand the phenomenon that people claimed happened often in and around the mansion. They set up their headquarters in a small hotel room and they would interview people in the lobby. It was an old town in the mountains and now it was a ski paradise in the winter but it was not yet that season so there were not many people around.

 Many told them that the mansion got “more active” during the summer, when less people were visiting. This was odd as, in many other towns, the occurrences happened always in the months when tourists were in larger numbers. Anyway, that didn’t mean it wasn’t a hoax, it just meant people in this town were probably not manipulating the events occurring in the house, or at least not in a large scale. In one week, they had already interviewed more than one hundred people and that was more than enough to make a survey that showed which were the most frequent activities inside.

 Apparently, people saw lights inside the house despite the manor being disconnected from the power grid, many people also testified seen people there wearing old clothes and ignoring them and the small group of people that had entered the house told him that the walls were covered in some strange goo, yellow in color and with a terrible smell. Besides that there was the usual: voices, lights that went in and out, strange sounds, the feeling of being touched… Marcus and Vanessa knew them all from their other experiences and were ready to debunk the tales of Donner mansion.

 The following week was used to enter the house. The plan was to go into the mansion every afternoon, three whole hours. They would carry special equipment to detect metals, radioactivity and other events that may seem strange but were very normal in a old house. They had done it a million times. The first day, on Monday, they entered the house with care as the front porch seemed to be damped and the wood that formed it seemed to be in the verge of breaking into several pieces. They went along with Xavier, an old friend of Marcus who loved the whole hunted house experience. He wasn’t a scientist but gladly helped as he thought it was a very cool thing to do.

 The first thing they felt was cold. Despite very warm temperatures on the outside, the house remained as cold as in the winter. They measured the temperature, noted it down, and proceeded to another room, crossing a large hall with care. The place was not dark as the afternoon light entered the house through the high windows all around the hall but it was very strange as the glass was not transparent but had various colors. It was like walking around a circus fair ride.

 The first room they entered after that happened to be the kitchen. It smelled awful, as if someone had left food to rot there. But that didn’t make sense as no one had lived there for the last hundred years. Vanessa put on some gloves and took out the food that was rotting in the fridge. There was a moldy cheese, meat and a chicken breast, all covered in green and smelling awful. However, Vanessa was able to recover a plastic covering from behind the food and put that in one of their own plastic bags.

 Vanessa had been with Marcus for a long time. She started as a student of his in a physics class back in the university but they had formed a nice friendship that had consolidated just after she had graduated. In the blink of an eye, Marcus had hired her to be his assistant in the university and proposed her to be his assistant in these trips too. Vanessa did not hesitate, as she thought it was a very cool thing to do and she confessed that she had always been bored out of her mind when friends started talking about the possibilities of life after death, ghosts and all that supernatural crap. She even had proven to them how the Ouija board was all about conditioned thinking, a fake in simple terms.

 After finding the rotten food, Xavier stepped on a weak part of the kitchen and the floor broke beneath his feet. He twisted his ankle and both Marcus and Vanessa had to help him out of the mansion and to the medical center down in town. It was good that Marcus had asked a local to be there with a car in case they needed help, so he took Xavier away and they had to cancel the rest of the exploration for that day. They spent the night in the hospital waiting for the doctor to tell them about their friend. He was ok but he was going to have a cast and crutches. So there was no way for him to join them anymore.

 The rest of the week, Marcus and Vanessa would go into the mansion and test every single apparatus they had inside. They used the electromagnetic device to prove that the house was actually not fully disconnected from the power grid and just walking around they found thousands of small gaps and holes, which were used by the wind to enter and make strange noises. All very natural.  The cold feeling inside the hosue was explained because of the location of the house, just in the way a small air current that went down the mountain, covered in snow all year, towards the valley were the town was located.

 The only thing that hadn’t been able to prove wrong was the presence of unknown people inside the house; even some wearing old robes, from the times when the mansion was built. They decided to plant several cameras all around the house and stay one more week. Marcus wanted to go away as soon as possible because, although he found it all to be very interesting and even funny, he also wanted to properly rest this summer before the classes began again. He didn’t have much time to spare and this time he wanted to think more about himself than about work or others.

 However, the cameras didn’t show anything. She stayed in front of the monitors for hours, even falling asleep in front of them but they had not picked up anything, not a real person, not a floating person, nothing. On the last day, the moment they were packing, something happened. One of the cameras picked up kind of a shade crossing the front side of the house, apparently entering the mansion. Back in his home, Marcus checked the video various times. He could explain the shadow; it was probably the sun and the surrounding trees. But there was a moment when a face seemed to appear and the door opened a bit, and it was a heavy wooden door.

 For the first time ever, Marcus decided he didn’t care. He didn’t believe he was a ghost and he knew there was an explanation to everything that happened in that place and in places like that all over the world. But the truth was he was tired, growing fed up with filling his life with meaningless things. He had to admit he still resented their family but that, however, he was in need of someone to hug and that feeling appeared to him, like a ghost, every single morning.

 There was nothing supernatural in Donner mansion but there was something missing, something rather natural, from Marcus’s life and he didn’t know exactly what it was or how to get it.

Dangerous questions

  It wasn’t only the rain but also the wind that kept us from walking faster but we finally made it to my building. We were completely soaked, dripping water all over the floor. I told him it was better to go up the stairs rather than taking the elevator. There was a lady that would have loved me to do something foolish in order to go to my house and do an hour-long speech about how neighbors should behave. She was a real pain in the ass but I understood why she was like that: she lived alone with her cats and rumor has it that she was left in the altar by some guy who vanished. She was devastated and now behaved like a bitch with everyone.

 I opened the door to my apartment and we got in. Suddenly he grabbed me by the waist and pressed me against himself. We kissed and in a matter of minutes are wet clothes were on the floor and he had taken me to the bedroom. His kisses somehow felt better after all that cold in the street and his body felt warmer, more comforting. We kissed in the nude for a long time and I understood we were good just like that. We didn’t need to have sex right then, it was better to hold each other and just kiss, keeping our bodies warm.

 We fell asleep after a few hours and it was me who woke up first. My bedroom window was covered in vapor and it actually felt a bit colder than before. Naked as I was, I decided to go to the kitchen and have something to drink. It was late at night, around 2 AM, but somehow I had just woken up because of this thirst. I stood by the living room window and cleaned it with my hand. It was raining fiercely outside, thunder sounds far in the distance. Just below the window, the street looked like a river, a lot of water rushing through.

 Suddenly I felt his hands on my waist again but this time he hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. I finished my drink and left the glass on the coffee table. Slowly, he lowered his hands and, next thing you know, we were having sex right there in my living room. I liked the feeling of his hands over my body and hearing how his breath had a rhythm that changed according to what we were doing at the moment. He seemed in control and I liked that because I wanted it to happen that way. We understood each other, in and out of bed and I was grateful for that. It wasn’t every day that you find a guy with whom you feel so at peace with.

 After finishing, we went back to bed and slept in a hug and well covered by the blankets. It was suddenly very cold and, before I went asleep, I heard the sound of something small hitting the ground. I realized it was hail just the morning after, went it was all covered in white, as if snow had fallen. But it was still raining and, according to the weather guy in the television, people should avoid going out if the could because of the flooded streets and the risk of streams forming everywhere. The city was practically built on a hillside so water always ran just past it, which could increase the damage done by the water.

 I decided to let him stay over the day, until the rain stopped at least. We had breakfast together and I discovered he chew with his mouth open. It was amazing to discover this because I also realized we had never had dinner or lunch or anything together. Every time we met was for sex or most of the time at least. And yeah, the sex was great, but it hit right there that we didn’t really know each other that well. As he ate his cereal with his feet on my coffee table, I watched him and realized we had no idea about the other person. We had been going out for three months now and I didn’t even exactly knew what he did for a living or what kind of movies he liked or anything else apart from sex.

 Things like movies or art or literature where great interests to me and I was surprised to see I didn’t know what he liked. So I turned off the TV, to his obvious displeasure, and asked him to play a game. Each one would have five questions, one per turn, and we could ask each other anything right there. After all the questions have been asked and answered, we could go back to whatever it is we were doing before. He accepted and we begin. It was a very bad way to begin, as my first question was “Why are your feet on my coffee table?” He instantly turned red and put his feet down.

 Ashamed and a bit confused he looked for his question. As he thought about it, I looked at his face and realized too that I had never really stared at him so close before. He didn’t look bad or anything but for most of the time that we were so close it was because we were having sex and that's not a moment you use to look at a person’s face. He finally asked me whom I had dated before him, something we had never discussed. I told him about this other guy, with whom I had dated for a long time before he left to live in Australia. He was in real state and I met him when renting my place. We went out often but never got serious because he already knew he was going to leave so he didn’t want for things to get weird.

 He just nodded to my answer but didn’t say a word. I could feel he wasn’t feeling very good about my answer but he didn’t say anything, except for “your turn”. I wanted to ask the same thing but that would have been boring. So instead I asked him how many relationships he had had in his life. He took his time to answer, visibly counting every person he had known. I started to get really annoyed because it was obvious he had slept with many men and was deciding which ones were “valid” as a relationship and which ones had just been a one-night stand. I didn’t wait for the answer. I just said “a lot then?” and he opened his mouth like a fish, not saying a word.

 I told him it was his turn but I think I said it with rage in my voice. His hesitation to answer had made me very angry and I just stood up and went to the kitchen. It was an open kitchen so I perfectly heard when he asked me what my favorite food was. I answered instantly that I love pasta with Bolognese sauce and meatballs. I told him that answering that fast was easy because I was sure of what I like and what I had done in the past in order for that to be my favorite food of all.

 He asked if I was mad about his answer to the question I had made him but I answered he had not even answered. As I grabbed two slices of bread and put them on I plate, I tried to breathe as calmly as I could but I was already trembling from rage. He said he didn’t answered because I had gotten all weird just before he was able to say anything, to which I responded, without missing a beat, that it was unusual for a grown man to need so much time to count the number of people he had been in a relationship with. I told him that I was just asking about the boyfriends and not the sexual partners, so that must be easier for him.

 Now it was a look of open hatred, the one he gave to be as I put ham and cheese on the bread. He said nothing but he turned around, no longer willing to play any game or answer any questions. We stayed in silence for several minutes until he said, in a clear voice, that he had only been the boyfriend of three guys. The first one in school, another in college and the last one just a year ago, meeting through a mutual friend. Yes, he confessed he liked sex and had been known to have casual sex with many guys but that it wasn’t something he did often.

 He shut up and resumed eating his cereal, again chewing with his mouth open. I told him to chew with his mouth closed and then he erupted, just like a volcano. He told me that I was too controlling, trying to make everyone do as I said. He reminded me of earlier, when he joined me in store and I apparently mistreated a worker there because she didn’t understood what I was looking for. He also said that during sex, I always wanted everything to be about me and that couldn’t be the case every single time. He complained that I had never tried to please him and that it was very exhausting for him.

 Obviously, there was no right way to answer that. He was shaking, no longer eating. He just stood up and went to the bedroom. I just stayed in the kitchen but I had lost my appetite, if it is that I had one before. He went out of the bedroom but didn’t talk to me. Instead, he picked up his clothes from the floor and put them on right there. I said, in a soft voice, that he could get sick if he wore that. But he didn’t listen or simply didn’t care about what I had to say anymore. He was very annoyed, that was obvious, but he didn’t hesitated for a moment. He went for the door and went out. He slammed the door and left my place.

 I looked at the window and realized it was still raining. Then, the doorbell rang and I opened. It was him, telling me he had left his wallet somewhere. He looked on the floor and found it beneath the sofa. But before he left again, I grabbed his arm and hugged him. Who cares if I didn’t know him that well? I needed him now and I was hoping he needed me back.

Dear you...

   Dear you,

 I dreamt about you again. Isn’t that strange? I hadn’t done that for quite some time. To be honest, I think I missed you there, in the shadows of my mind and my thoughts.

 You were great, by the way. I could feel your touch, your breathing and your whole presence with me. We were in bed and about to make love but we didn’t get quite there. I’m afraid I woke up a little bit beforehand. But that’s not important. What is important is that I felt you there, so close, like I had never felt you in many months, maybe in a year.

 Once I fell asleep, I remembered your scent, your gentle touch. And, although I couldn’t see your face, I knew it was you. It’s always you anyway and sometimes that makes me go mad because dreams can be very well created, very realistic and apparently honest. I wanted you by my side this morning, I wanted to hug you hard, to be able to smell your hair and feel every little feature of your skin. But I couldn’t and that makes me the saddest person on Earth right now.

 How is it that you can enter my dreams like that? You’re there with me, for real, I know it. I feel my mind is not wrong when your arms do feel warm and when your legs join mine and we kiss. It’s you, I just know it is. How can you do it? How can you bare to be here with me and then disappear as if nothing had happened? Am I even important to you, at all? Can you bare to see me go away, walk away from you and declare how much I despise you for stepping away like a shade on sunrise.

 You have been doing this for many months now, maybe years. You know my mind is not the best, my memories are misplaced but my feelings help me not to loose it. And, to be honest, your presence helps me not to go completely mad. Isn’t that funny? Someone that isn’t even here helps me be grounded and balanced. It sound insane and yet it is but it helps. Since you started entering my dreams I have some good nights and I can hope again as I never was able to do. I thank you for that.

 But I know that you know this can only be maintained for a little while. You, coming and going, it’s just not going to work. And not because I need you so much by my side but because I cannot pretend I feel I’m loosing my mind. When you touched my body and I touched yours this morning, I felt on fire. And this fire was not only coming from my heart and my yearning for your skin, but from my mind. My brain is now burning with desires, with needs. My mind wants you to stay too and she can be much more compelling than the rest of me.

 So, would you stay? I think I know the answer to this question but anyway I ask because I know I need to hear it, to read it from you. I need you to tell me something that I can define, that I can understand once and for all because my mind is on the edge, about to fall into an abyss of eternal darkness and despair. I don’t want it to fall into that and all because of you. I don’t want that, I can’t bare the thought of you being my demise. I just can’t do that.

 I have been there before. On one of your absences, I was down there for quite a while. I know now how despair really feels like, how it smells and how it sticks to you like glue that just won’t let go. Darkness was all around me and I had to save myself. To be clear, I would never ask you to save me because that’s not why I need you. You know very well I’m strong enough to withstand anything like that. With every second of despair, of being lost and wandering through life, I’ve grown.

 My looks don’t really give it away, right? I know, I have never been a physical man in any senses but believe when I say that strength comes in many shapes and forms. You could say life has trained me not to depend on anyone, on anything. But, yet again, I’m still human and I still feel like one. I cannot prevent myself from feeling lost sometimes, eager to change or wanting to feel those other feelings, the warm ones that are always there when you are around. That’s one I need from you, what I seek when you’re near me. Not a protection of any kind or someone to protect. Rather, you just make me feel.

 Feel. That sounds so simple, doesn’t it? Maybe it is. Maybe we just complicate our lives, trying to make everything look much more difficult than it is when, the truth is, feeling is just letting yourself go. Maybe that’s why I dream about you sometimes: I let go completely when I’m sleep and then you come and make my mornings just perfect. I swear they are with your kisses, your touch, the sexual desire and that beautiful warmth you bring to my life. If I could dream with you every night, I think I wouldn’t be able to stand it. It would be to much for me. I might be strong but not that strong.

 What’s awful is that I don’t know what you like in the mornings, besides kisses and hugs. Do you like to drink coffee? And if you do, how do you like your coffee? I personally hate it but I would keep one of those machines for you, just to make you happier in the mornings. I can almost picture you, standing by the kitchen counter, sipping from a mug, blowing softly over the coffee to make it go cold. You wouldn’t need to look at me for me to know I would be undoubtedly and deeply in love with you.

 No, don’t be scared. I don’t think I love you know. But I do think that might be possible in the future. If I keep looking at you like I do, if you keep entering my head as you always do, the only possible outcome is that I would become madly in love with you. I would breath for you and walk for you. That may be the future. But again, who knows if there’s going to be a future at all? Maybe we won’t get there; maybe life finds a way to keep us apart for good, only visiting in each other in dreams and illusions until we go insane.

 See? I’m never too far from that word. I guess it haunts me, it chases me through life and I just can’t escape from it. But… It makes me think. What if that’s because of you? What if I’m going insane because I’m already in love with you? People say love is unconditional and universal but that may not be true, love might be different for each person, each individual in this world and that’s how you might be driving me insane. You’re making me fall in love with you. And maybe love is only a poison to me, a venom far worse from anything found in nature.

 It makes sense, when you think about it. That pain, that agonizing pain you feel when you care for someone. It feels like a poison, slowly entering the body slowly, working for years until it finally takes its victim. Strangely, that sounds even more romantic than any other thing I’ve ever heard about. If love was a poison, I would drink it gladly but only if it came for you. That’s my honest answer because I know, every time I see your face, that make me feel different, special, unique and small. And that’s all very strange but amazing.

 I know, for a fact, that I’m not amazing or unique or anything like that. I’m just one small man in a world that is larger than him but that’s also small and insignificant. So who really cares about anything? Who cares if love kills or it doesn’t? I certainly don’t. Who cares if it drives you insane, if it makes you lose yourself completely? Again, I don’t. Because it’s a gamble, a choice you make and I think I might be able to make that choice. Now? No, not now. I have no shame in saying I’m not ready for such a commitment, for such a deep dive.

 But I will. We will all be ready, one fay or the other. There’s a different day, for each of us, in which we will be ready to do what it takes to achieve what we want to achieve, to reach the top of the mountain that has been elusive to our hands. But the mountain doesn’t go away just because you fail or die. It will always be there and one day we will have what it takes to take it for us and make it ours. That’s whom you are for me, my beautiful-snow capped mountain.

 You know? I need you here now. But reality has just fallen with its bright veil around me and I see now that you are not. You are not. And I am. Now I have to keep being until I have my moment, until the day arrives that I can be more than what I am now. Then, hopefully, I will be able to touch you, kiss you and tell you how much I thank you for being there.