THE COSMIC PILGRIM

        I don’t remember since how long a time I have been here. In the world they have driven me away from, the time flows in a totally different way than  on this star I have fallen upon. I don’t even know whether they wanted me to fall here, or they just threw me randomly without caring about where I would reach. The only thing I know is that everything has happened so fast that I have not even had the time to say goodbye to everything I was not going to see ever again. As soon as the sentence “guilty” was heard, a vortex took me away,  throwing me in the tunnel that brought me here with such an amazing speed that I could not see anything around me. I am sure they have decided it to be like this, in order to make sure I would not recognize the way and I would never return.
        Here, where I have reached, the time is a kind of game with color spheres and the horizons look never the same. The white faces of the spheres – that they call “days” – color the horizons in purple, then the red of the fireball rolling on the sky is fading away into a bright yellow surrounded by a light blue. Those puffy crowns always slip away and disappear, and their traveling outlines, always reminding forgotten or unknown things, get never repeated. I have never known anything of all these by now ; I only know the millions of lights lit on the sky by the dark faces of the spheres – that they call “nights”. They are the stars of the immense space I come from, my house is on one of them but it is too far away to be seen.

        I wonder how long a time would it have passed there, in my home world… I close my eyes trying to remember the flowing of the time, but everything here is so different that my memory remains behind, blurred. Do they know where I am ? Have they any idea about the world they have thrown me in ? I know they have driven me away for good but I also know they would accept me back if I bring them something they had never seen before.

        I would like to give them that wonder that those living here call “sea”. But I don’t know how I could carry it and, most of all, I still don’t know whether it’s a thing or a living creature. It must be a creature because it is full of life ; sometimes it’s green, other times blue, sometimes calm, other times furious,  but always breathing in white foamy crowns that die at its edges. Therefore, it could not live in the cold of our world and nobody would have the chance to see its beauty, for it would die right away beneath our horizonless sky, where the same sad, far away, red planet can always be seen, from anywhere. And the white-black spheres that they call “days” roll one after the other and I can’t find the wonder that would pay back for my right to return

        Today, through that square glass that I know it is called “window”, I have seen something I had never seen before. In the misty paleness of the morning, at the edge of the sea, two creatures of this world have met each other. One was fragile and tiny, the other was tall and strong and they were coming towards each other on the wet sand. Their hands met in a gesture reminding the movements of those white little creatures flying around in the morning screaming joyfully. And when their lips have met as well, I felt deep inside me a sharp but sweet pain as never before.

*

        Tonight, the sky has opened. I see the open end of the tunnel waiting to aspire me back to my world. I step boldly, without looking behind, because I know what I will take with me.  I have found what I can bring on my planet, as a priceless gift, without depriving this wonderful world of anything. And while I travel through the time and stars, thinking of home, I feel again in my chest that sweet unknown pain that I don’t understand, but that I would not like to lose. It is for the first time I feel this and also for the first time something flows from my eyes. The same as it happened with the tiny creature that morning, after the strong one has told her those soft words.

        The misty outline of my planet is already to be seen. I have reached the edges of my world and still I don’t know how I am going to explain what I have brought to them. I only know that, in the world I come from, they were calling it love.

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