The stars are there, glued to the night and just waiting for the wishes expressed by someone to be able to break away. He holds my hand walking slightly ahead of me as if to guide and protect me on that dark path in the middle of the woods. Sometimes I stumble and I can’t walk well on the pebbles. We laugh, making fun of each other for the way we walk: clumsy and insecure. August can be felt in the air. We are young, carefree and in love. And we feel invincible. Suddenly I stop to catch my breath […]

I turn on the car. I pull the handbrake, get out and help my mother load the shopping bags, she holds the baby. He is my brother but he calls me ‘Uncle’. He is three years old. We get in the car, I start to leave when he caresses my arm and tells me: “How strong are you Uncle” I often forget that I am already grown up. I am thirty years old and yet sometimes it does not seem real to me that I have arrived here. I don’t think I’m a teenager, mind you. It is simply that […]

I answer my cell phone. Or not. I’m confused. I hope to hear a voice, that voice. But it could be someone else. And they would be big problems, which I don’t know how to solve Driiiin, Driiiiin. The phone rings. It is a number that I do not know. I get paralyzed, my sweat freezes. I’m waiting for you to call me Ibra, he went to get the drugs for two hours now. I’m sick, my bones hurt, I don’t have the strength to get up. This is not his number. Maybe he’s calling me from one of his […]

In Perugia? You find it everywhere. You don’t need to leave the city. You can find it in any square, at the station, at school. Everywhere. It’s like Bologna: a drug market square in the light of the sun. I used to take her at school. I was fourteen when I started using weed. I started with the older kids, with those from the last year. I attended the first year of high school, but I went out with those of the fifth: an unusual thing, it is true, but I am a friendly and expansive type, I make myself […]

High school arrives and, not knowing what to do, I decide to follow my best friend to high school. In reality I didn’t give a damn about studying. I just wanted to live my new life, given the price I had to pay to hang with “them” By now I was just happy to go to school to be with “the worst” in the class, those considered cool, and already being accepted in their group it was really a dream for me. I felt great when it came to the various qualities of marijuana or which drug was better. That […]

I was two years old when you decided to leave. I was too young to remember. You certainly loved me but at that time you were only thinking about yourself, about the lifestyle you led. Between dealing, money, crime and drugs … there was neither space nor time to look after a little girl. Despite knowing how rigid Switzerland and its borders were, you left for your hometown, Santo Domingo. You never came back dad. Never again. Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t, legally or economically. But you didn’t care, you didn’t want to be a father. “Selfish”, “superficial”. […]

I wake up in the morning I hear beating and screaming, I turn around the guy who was with me is not there, I see him and he tells me to get dressed, afterwards I see a policeman emerge from the window with the gun pointed at me … and I think “okay this time they will put me in jail ” I hear the policeman who says to open the door, the guy who was with me opens to him enters the room where I was, looking at me” You’re here too?!?!?! ” I see the policeman on the balcony […]

I am writing to you, Mery. An important message to keep in mind, written in black and white to never forget it, dedicated to the person I have to value. The same person I hurt so much. Those days when you were afraid to live and you turned off your brain not to hear seems so far away. To not feel those damned feelings, that sense of inferiority that you have carried within you all your life. The problem is this: your hyper-sensitivity. You know it well, you have recently tasted life outside Sanpa and you know that you have […]

I met Gabry in sixth grade through a mutual friend. We immediately got along, becoming inseparable. We were both doing well in school, but gradually the grades began to deteriorate and we were no longer able to be consistent in the study. When I was with him I no longer worried so much about doing my thing right. I’m Samuel, I’m 19 and I come from a small town in Lombardy where I live with my mother. My father is no longer with us, in fact he practically never was, since my parents separated when I was just over a […]

It was early January, it was yet another escape from something that seemed to chase me everywhere. Unfortunately, only after years I realized that fears and insecurities do not belong to the place where you are but to those who carry them inside. It was the first time in my life that I spent Christmas in the warmth of the Caribbean. I still remember that heat that seemed to slap you. All the rich families kept the air conditioners day and night, while the vast majority of the people struggled to find a piece of chicken and some rice to […]

I was practically addicted to my parent’s presence and someone’s protection. I’ve always been raised under a glass dome. For my family, I was the little angel destined for many good things, with a secure and bright future ahead of him. I lived with the constant feeling of looking for something, but I didn’t know what. I always felt like I was hanging by a thread and the greatest fear was that at any moment that “thread” would break. I imagined falling, sinking into an open sea without any life jacket. That’s why I was looking for buoys where to […]

There is a terrible stench everywhere. Sheets, clothes, curtains and that damn sofa on which we spend hours and hours without strength. Thrown there, like dirty laundry. I don’t drink, it makes me sick. He does. Badly. He devastates himself. He starts doing it right away, as soon as he opens his eyes, at any time. Ketamine dinner. We decided to quit the heroin. Silence.  I don’t say a word, neither does he. Yet I would like to throw up on him all the thoughts that i dragged with me like boulders for days, for months, for too long. “Come […]