Heading South

Words and images by @serste

We landed at the Heathrow Airport.

It was, as usual, rainy.

I didn’t clapped.

A few hours earlier, Cecilia was kissing me in my messy room.

A goodbye before my fourth study trip to UK, and after our first journey together.

I had asked Cecilia to join my family and me to a two-week holiday in Calabria, feeling deeply the urgency of keep her as close as possible.

Just two months of ‘us’, and we were headed to the South.

She was one year older than me, freshly seventeen.

Her charm wasn’t only aesthetic: there was that peculiar way of talking to people, that enticing yet dark tone, that made you wish to know more about her.

She had many pretenders. Some of them were the kind of teen I would’ve like to be.

The kind of Successful Adult’s cocoon everyone was talking about.

Bittersweet memories of that journey to my hometown, to the deep Aspromonte’s mountains, invade my heart and further.

We were spending our afternoons making love.

I was spending them assembling a brand new system of Trust.