Journal Entry — December 28, 2024
Location: Rome, Italy
Writer: Enrique Demetriou
Time: 3:07 a.m.
Entry Title: "The Blue Light"
I haven't slept through the night in weeks.
Rome is beautiful, loud, alive—exactly what I thought I needed. The alleys breathe history, the churches hum with memory, and I walk among ruins trying to feel like a man again. A normal man. One who drinks espresso, kisses girls in piazzas, pretends the sea never touched him the way it did.
But every time I close my eyes…
The light finds me.
It starts faint—like stars under water. Pale ribbons of blue curling slow and patient through the dark.
They move like smoke, like breath, like something that remembers me.
The color isn't just seen—it's felt. It blooms inside my chest, behind my ribs, as if my heart is trying to answer it with its own pulse.
Then I see her.
Always her.
Half-submerged, staring through the dream. Eyes full of mourning and quiet fury and hope.
Sometimes she reaches for me.
Sometimes she turns away.
But every time I wake, I do so with her name caught in my throat—and I don't even know her name.
Just the memory of the night she raised her hand.
The weight of the silence that passed between us.
The salt-stung look in her eyes before she sank back into the black.
Why didn't I go back?
I meant to. I wanted to.
But the world pulled me onward. Life, family, obligations, fear… and the whisper in my mind that maybe it was better to leave it behind. Safer. Less strange.
But it didn't stay behind.
It followed me.
In reflections. In showers. In dreams.
In quiet thoughts between music notes and rain.
Sometimes I stare into the Tiber and wonder if she could find me here.
If she would even try.
If she wants to.
Or if I'm just another warm-blooded fool she watched from the waves and pitied.
But then I remember that look.
Not pity.
Longing.
The same one I feel now, sitting awake in a city of stone, haunted by something older than gods.
If I go back, would she still be there?
Would she still wait?
Would she remember?
Or has the tide turned, and carried her away from me forever?
I leave the window open now.
Just in case.
Maybe the wind still carries my breath.
Maybe the stars whisper my name across the Ionian.
Maybe the lights she gave me still shine beneath the waves.
I don't know if I can go back yet.
But I know this:
She never really left me.
And I don't think she ever will.