Your eyes

I wrote this short story for the wedding of my niece Veronica and her husband Luis Mario. They met in the Vatican. They were both in the queue among the people, waiting to enter, but in two different queues.
Luis Mario had noticed her, but she didn't even spare him a glance. This is what they told me.
I did what a writer does: he puts himself into other people's situations, trying to intuit their thoughts, hypothesizing their flow.
This time I identified with Luis Mario.
The result is the following story, which I naturally titled "Your eyes" and dedicated to the spouses and their happy union.

PS They crowned their love by getting married in the Vatican, right where they met, making their dream come true.

—

I saw you that first time in St. Peter's Square, among the crowd, in the entrance queue next to mine.
I looked at you enchanted, while my heart beat so fast that I feared he would go out, reach you and beg for a look from you.
Because you were looking elsewhere.
If you had raised your eyes, if you had noticed me, I am sure, I would have left something in your heart too.
Maybe we could, in the evening, remember that moment and think that, perhaps yes, dreams and emotions, despite ourselves, were throbbing in our souls.
If you had looked up, the rest would have come by itself.
As if pushed by water and wind, transported by a nature of which we are part.
If you had seen me, silence would have fallen and there would have been nothing left in that square except the two of us, motionless and enraptured, against a blurred background.

We could have gotten to know each other, maybe meet again, to understand each other, without really studying each other, going beyond the desire to accept what our intuition already knew. And perhaps our desires would have been compared and identified, in an attempt to shed that mask we wear for others, with the intuition of being people capable of "seeing".

If only you had looked up at me, everything would have happened without any effort, silent love would have spoken with our voice again.

You would have introduced me to your parents: your father would have looked at me, seriously weighing my being a foreigner, your mother instead would have smiled sweetly, because your eyes would have been enough for her to understand that everything, in our hearts, had already happened.
We would have gotten married in Rome, in this same place. Why not? It could have happened, if only you had looked up at me.
My father would have cried while yours would have remained serious.

We would have had children, a dog, or maybe a cat and a house full of us, or another destiny, but in every hypothetical future we would have remained one of those rare couples who defy time and grow together, and don't even notice us.
We would have shared the food, the effort, the joy and the tears, the sky and the earth, experiencing the wonder of seeing each other, meeting each other, discovering together that there are invincible feelings that defy time, sensing that we need to reconquer ourselves every day, that only once it is not enough.

We would have grown old peacefully, shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, crossed by time, pierced by the years, but with the certainty of belonging to each other beyond the world, beyond time.
Because certain coincidences are as unique as wishes that come true. Certain destinies are not for everyone and only happen in dreams, or, simply, in the miracle of life.

It was October 14, 2018, and while I was daydreaming, enraptured by my thoughts, I raised my gaze again and met your eyes.