The sun had already begun its descent,
slanting shadows across the narrow veins of San Remo,
where stone remembers more than the flesh ever could.
I wandered —
not with purpose, but with the weight of years
that cling to a man like forgotten debts.
Salt clung to the wind from the Ligurian sea,
a bitter taste on my lips —
not unlike regret.
Every corner of the city whispered,
but not in a language of joy.
Old voices, eroded by time,
crawled up from beneath the cobblestones,
speaking of wars, of betrayals,
of saints and thieves who wore the same robes.
I passed shuttered windows
where generations had sighed,
made love, wept,
and grown old without leaving
a single mark
except the dents in the wood
and the memory of perfume lost in curtains.
San Remo is not a city,
it is a wound that never quite closes.
A place that remembers
while men forget.
My boots scraped the history
of empires crumbled and reborn in dust.
Roman stones beneath my soles —
the same stones that bore the weight of soldiers,
of poets, of beggars drunk on cheap wine
and too much sky.
I stopped at a taverna,
drawn not by hunger,
but by the murmur of glasses clinking,
as if life inside could defy
the silence that gnawed at the bones of the street.
Inside,
men sat slouched over tables,
as if gravity worked harder in old cities.
A television whispered nonsense from a corner.
No one listened.
A child laughed —
the only living sound.
I ordered red wine,
the kind that tastes like iron and grief.
It was served by a woman
whose hands moved like she had carried
a hundred years in her apron.
And there,
with the first sip,
I felt it —
the truth:
that man means nothing
when placed beside time.
That we are guests
in a house built by ghosts,
filling the rooms with our noise,
only to vanish
like steam on the glass.
I looked around
at the peeling walls,
the cracked floor,
the calendar still showing May
when it was already July.
Even time was reluctant
to pass in this place.
I thought of the men who once ruled,
and where they were now —
bones in the earth,
names forgotten,
their dreams drowned
in the Mediterranean’s slow breath.
What did it matter
that I had loved,
that I had wept beneath stars,
that I had bled for things
now reduced to memory’s ash?
Outside,
San Remo carried on,
indifferent to my musings.
The sea didn’t pause.
The bells didn’t toll for me.
A seagull cried overhead
like it had seen the truth
and regretted it.
I paid for the wine
and walked out,
my body heavier
but my heart strangely still —
as if I had finally accepted
my place
beneath the centuries.
A flickering lamplight lit my path.
I walked without speaking,
a ghost among ghosts,
a man no more eternal
than a single sigh
lost in the alleys of history.
Broken Author 