Love in pieces

18/04/2022 Nilson Lattari

The couple walked down the illuminated pavement by the light from the windows stores. The elegant street was an invitation for a relaxing walk and for people to admire clothes and objects, pointing their fingers at them as if they have been looking for a subject for a conversation to spend time.
There wasn’t car traffic in the street and only people walking.
My mobile was making sounds all the time involved in a funny conversation with my friends.
When I lifted my head away from the illuminated screen, the first thing that I saw was a pretty couple walking. They walked hand in hand and touched their bodies lightly as if they felt their temperature higher, their suavity, involved in a chemistry coming from two souls who get attracted.
Ok, in fact, the reason of my attraction it was not a couple walking but two young women embraced and sometimes kissed without exaggeration.
I smiled. I smiled like an observer who wasn’t used to seeing them, homosexual people showing their love in the streets, revealing their feeling. Feeling that was hidden in rooms and private places and now it is flowing free.
One of them wore a beautiful flowery dress, her hair with a hair clip, a necklace and high heels. The other wore sober clothes, short hair and she hasn’t got any accessories.
Their faces were illuminated by their youth, and their eyes sparkled demonstrating their happiness.
Like a sky dropping down like rain, bolts, a group of guys wearing black clothes as their feelings arrived in the street. Their bodies had sinister tattoos etched and they started beating the one who would be the boyfriend, I assumed, as if it were an act of revenge against a woman who wasn’t obeying their rules and thoughts.
They avoided that the other got closer to try to help her beloved friend. Her screams mixed with the guy’s hard words and her protest wasn’t enough to alert people around them. Me and they watched that situation as a horror show on an opened stage in the city.
It seemed that I wasn’t there. I was paralysed and astonished while I heard sounds from my mobile. People trying to speak frivolities while it happened a barbarism in front of my eyes.
Full of madness, the group went away, leaving on the ground, involved in blood and deformation the one who was walking with confidence through the street.
The girlfriend was crying and knelt down beside the one and put her hands on her chest, looking at her lover who was a mixture of blood, torn clothes and tears, wondering why those things happen.
It was violence on the pavement, a love made in pieces fighting against prejudices.
We must condemn all the ways of hate but not the ways of love.