Write to me when you get home.
I stretch in his bed and smell his cologne mixed with the stark contrast of his cigarettes on his pillow. Where is he right now? I check for sounds that may sign a human presence, the rustling of the newspaper, the lighter being clicked for ignition, the cup being put down on the table, but nothing. I can hear nothing. Am I gone deaf? The stillness of the morning has ruptured and now panic begins. ‘It couldn’t have happened again’, I whisper to myself. I run around the apartment looking for clues about his whereabouts, but nothing can be found until I enter the kitchen and see a letter on the table. A coffee cup is on top to keep it from flying away, since the windows are all open to let the smoke out. The cup left a little moon on the letter’s envelope, that’s now tainted with coffee. I open it and his cologne impregnates my nostrils. His typical perfume is something manly, something that wants to dominate the entire world or, at the very least, mine. ‘You cannot be serious, Augustine. That’s just to taunt me at this point’, I say to myself, since I’m the only human presence. Just a word scribbled in a disorganised way, as if he was in a hurry. ‘Goodbye’, it reads. He left me. In his apartment. Alone. The door is unlocked. He left everything behind, including me. I see his leather briefcase on one of the chairs. The only thing he truly cared about was being left alone with me. And I still haven’t decided what to do with it.
Credits: Photo by Leonardo Bornati / Text by Francesca Jude Fusetti / Talent Domenico Di Cristo / Still Life by Sara Ferraris