Fitz

You would never have believed it.
Nobody believed it.

And yet, war broke out. Brutal. Total.
We left in just a few days. Me too.
I said almost nothing when I left, except for this clumsy promise, rushed between two silences: to return.
And you answered me with something even greater — watching over my mother.

I clung to it there. To that. To you.

The days were no longer days, just a series of noises, mud, and cries that eventually stopped being heard.
So I wrote.
I was telling you without saying everything. The rain, yes. The cold, sometimes.
But never the smell. Never the faces. Never the fear that clings to the skin.

And you answered.
Always.
Your words were clean, almost gentle. Too gentle to be true.
I knew it.
But I needed it.

You were lying a little, too.
To protect myself.
To give me a reason to keep going.

Four years have passed like this.
Four years of surviving rather than living.

And then one morning, your letter had changed.
Shorter. Heavier.
My mother had passed away.

I wasn't there.

There was nothing left to defend.
Nothing left, except the thought of you.

So I came back.

One evening, finally, I pushed open the door.
The house… empty in a different way.
And you.

I saw you.

And I lowered my eyes.

Because I knew what I had become.
A damaged body. A shadow of what I once was.
Someone you don't really recognize.
Someone we look at with pity… or with silence.

I was scared.
Not war. Not this time.
But from your gaze.

Fear of seeing it as the end of everything.
Fear of being nothing to you anymore.

So, in my mind, it was already lost.

Because this war…
I went through it for you.
I had won it, I thought, to find you again.

But in front of you that evening,
I didn't even know anymore
if I still had something to offer you.