To my friend

I remember you… from when we had no bodies, from when we were only flight, stardust, you awoke in me, as if eternity had its own maps and the soul followed paths that connect us, and in seconds the certainty of “I know you” awakens in us. And in recognizing you I choose you once more because your presence warms me more than a burning fire and your silences know how to shelter. I choose your infectious laughter, which surely saved me in another life too, and your spark that sets boredom ablaze and turns an ordinary afternoon into a celebration. I choose the way you listen, with its power to decipher and untie my knots. I choose you because presence does not fade with distance, does not measure time or demand space. Ours is one of those bonds that need no explanation, because they are born of a truth that never expires, where I recognize myself without disguise.

I choose you because with you I do not need to be brave all the time, or have answers, or find meaning in every fall. I can simply be. Shed the words that protect me, the certainties that hold me up, and rest in that form of love that does not ask what the other can offer, but how to hold them better. There is something sacred in our friendship, something that does not belong entirely to this life. As if before learning our names we already knew how to recognize each other, our souls, somewhere before time, made a pact to meet so that together we could remember the way back. And here we are, carrying our stories, with the scars that deepened us, with the questions that still inhabit us and that wonderful ability to keep laughing heartily amid the mystery of being alive. How lucky I am that among so many souls, so many faces, so many fleeting encounters, life has brought you back to me. Because some people pass through our story and others become home. You are one of those. Those who know how to stay without binding, keep company without intruding, love without possessing. Those who remind us that we are not alone on this journey, that even when the world turns strange there is a gaze in which we can rest. And if someday we become flight again, stardust, or song, if the universe undoes us and scatters us through its immensity, I want to believe that something in each of us will go on recognizing the other. A vibration. A laugh. A light that comes on for no reason. And we will find each other again. Perhaps in another land, in another body, beneath another sky. And once again, in an instant, without knowing how or why, we will feel that ancient certainty: Ah, it was you. And the soul, which never forgets what it truly loves, will speak your name again like someone coming home.