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27 September 2016

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LEAVING AGAIN

by Valentina De Simone

Platform 9, passengers are waiting to get on the train, carrying their sad luggage, with a heavy heart. The smiles are on the faces of those who are leaving on holiday, as well as of those who work 24 hours, nonstop.
“I’ll come to say goodbye before yo u leave”, you promised the other day. ” Wait for me at the station, I’ll come from my office.”

Today, the day of your birthday, it has been twelve months since I haven’t seen you.
Maybe I’m the only person who still knows when your birthday is.

“I’ll come to say goodbye before you leave”.

Right, leaving again. The Central Station is its temple, whether you are departing or arriving.

17:40. The phone lights up: ” Where are you? I’m coming”.
“At 9” I reply.

“I’ll come to say goodbye before you leave”.
I look around: it’s 5.35pm. The train is leaving at 6.05pm.

Leaving again is like a symphony you listen to when you’re ready. It’s that rhythm which makes the universe dance.

5:42pm: leaving again is a retrospective journey to the Ithaca where something has remained broken and so far has never been fixed again.
5:45pm: leaving again is examining the foundations, before proceeding with the building. It’s interrupting your writing activity for a moment and rereading to see if the plot makes sense.
5:47pm: leaving again is forgiving people, places, words and songs. Leaving again is thanking them and letting them go.
5:48pm: leaving again is the foolish act of not renouncing the world and love anymore, after a blinding pain. Because leaving again is especially feeling joy again, falling in love again.
5:50pm: leaving again is making a deal with yourself, it’s the best part of me, which I’m putting at the service of my dreams, now that I’m stronger, now that I can depart again.
5:55pm: leaving again is looking at your face and fearing no longer who you really are.
“I’ll come to say goodbye before you leave”.

6pm: you arrive late, as usual.
Your hug is like your name, reliable and short.
“Do you remember when…?” You whisper softly in my ear. “The two of us, our heads downwards, our feet leaning to the wall… The cigarette and our different accents, which made us laugh so hard”.

“In the end I didn’t keep the promise” I confess, interrupting you.

6.04pm: This is what I would love to tell you at 9.
“Where are you? I’m getting off the metro, I’m coming.”

And while you were running up the stairs, I had already got on the train. I was leaving again, with a return ticket, to start building again.
18:06. It will be told that there was a boy, wearing a red tie, his gaze was lost.
He threw his heavy bag on the floor looking around. He was looking for something. His eyes stared the platform the train had just departed from. It will be told that he quietly whispered:”We were terribly wrong don’t follow me.”

That’s what you said, do you remember when?

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Photography Sara Cartelli
© The Eat Culture

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Valentina De Simone

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Valentina De Simone

Bio:

Community Manager with a passion for sociology, I've lived for six years between Padua and Milan. Once I wrote an odd theory on Mathematics, on a Mathematics task. I took zero and the professor told me that I had to find an outlet for my too much imagination, if I wanted to live in the real world. I bought a notepad and began to write to him everything that was going through my head, so love for writing was born, love for expression.

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