One day you'll be back

It was not me. It wasn't for me. That wasn't my Christmas tree. It was a cold August night. The usual at that time of year. The day had passed normally and I happily awaited his call. The windows still stained from the previous day's storm told the story of the days of an atypical summer, a summer that glimpsed the miracle of new love, of the memory of afternoons in the street, of children shouting on the sidewalk for my brother to come down, of my mother shouting for me to finish my homework. Blessed summer, colored crystals, spring of illusion at forty degrees? The afternoons were long until I heard your voice. In that instant the scene froze, and my daily life began to make sense. Your eyes spoke to me through your voice and I could feel how much your fifteen teenage years loved me.All this time I have looked through my memories at the picture of that last afternoon when I saw you. You pretended to know that you were not leaving, that you would come back to say goodbye. You used to tell me: "Christmas is not for me, but when you look at the tree you will have a present from me, every year it will be there, you don't know why or how, but you will always find it". The wet streets talk to me about you whispering your name and reviving my memories and I still hope that one day you will slip through the clouds and come back to look for me, enter through my window and take me to that world that only you know. You swore to me eternal love but that day you left this little girl at the mercy of the passing of time, which is the only one that does not forgive, implacable in its presence, untamed and impossible to tame. If one day I were to tell you that in that tree I found your gift, I would lie, I would cry so bitterly that its lights would go out when I saw my disconsolate tears, useless hopes banished to the oblivion of illusion. That is the true tragedy of childhood, to discover that life is promised to us in crayons that gradually lose their intensity and when we want to realize we have grown too much, and the crayons are already pens, and the pens are markers that one day no longer mark, nor paint, nor write love letters. I miss you. You told me you loved me; that I was your child, the only one, that you would always be with me. But that fateful afternoon you left. And my world stopped, and you knew it. You knew it was our last time. The last time for both of us. The unconditional. The one that tears can't bend. No turning back for the memory of your first smile, no comfort for my poor heart. But I remember you every day, every night, from my little world, from my humble life, I love you and, believe it or not, I wait for you, because I know that one day you'll be back.