Against all rationality.
The moment they meet, my core burns in a longing I have never felt before.
She pulls me close, carefully, even softly, and yet, demanding.
Our tongues explore each other.
Even this close, we are not close enough.
I want to become one with her.
Dissolve in this feeling.
The feeling of becoming nobody in a world where I have to be everybody.
There is no past.
No future.
Just the present.
Her touch.
Her lips.
19
ROSALIA & ANTONELLA
PLAYLIST: CAN’T PRETEND – TOM ODELL
Rosalia
Ihave done many questionable things in my life, and I have never asked myself whether any of them were right or wrong. This here, I know it is wrong. It is wrong from here to heaven, to hell, and back.
It is wrong. It is reckless. It is the one mistake I have made in my life, and there is no way back.
“Rose,” she breathes out. She uses my short name for the first time. “I am sorry that I killed your son,” she whispers. My chest clenches. How dare she bring up?—
“I am sorry that he tried to touch me, and I defended myself. I am sorry I took him from you. I did mean to kill him, but I did not mean to hurt you.”
Her words wander into my chest, and I feel. I feel so much. A single tear fights its way over my cheek. I wish to run. To outrun all the things I feel. She took him. But she didn’t mean to hurt me. And I cannot hate her anymore. I cannot hate, because all I do is feel. Feelings that crush me. Feelings I buried in coldness, distance and pain.
“I do not know how to be gentle,” I whisper against her lips. The woman in my touch with those lips I long for. “I don’t know how to be gentle, because all I ever knew is pain.”
She smiles against my lips and brushes away the tear.
“You are right now,” she whispers. “That is where you start. And the rest? I can teach you—you just need to be willing to listen.”
She is so young, yet wiser than I am, despite all those years of age.
“Teach me,” I say and close my eyes. My chest tightens the moment the words come over my lips. I retract slightly. A feeling I dislike spreads through me. Asking someone so young for a lesson is something I never thought would happen. I shift uncomfortably, and I feel the need to retract further. Away. To hide. Because I feel less of a woman.
I am Rosalia Vittare.
I don’t hide.
I feel less because of her.
