Dear Wizard,

a letter that I will not send, an answer to yours that you must come and look for. In the end, you always knew where to find me, if you only wanted, if you only really cared.

I’ve been thinking about us, in the past months, an avalanche of memories, of laughter, of expected messages, of dreams, of crazy songs, of Nina Simone, of countdowns, of packages around the world, of disheveled words, of books, of promises, of imagined journeys, of hippos with Tutus and around 290 weddings. 

“As many times as you like”, to be precise.

I thought about all this, I saw my tears again at the airport, staring motionless at the departure terminal. I had accepted that there would be no future yet grateful for what we had. 

Then your letters, the hope that yes, maybe it could have been. 

Until the day you were gone. 

Lost in your life. 

You didn’t miss me. You didn’t need me. 

Ready to call me from a rooftop of a distant house to know what I thought of your books, never just to tell me you missed me. 

I have always found wonderful the image of you on a rooftop staring at a sizzling gaze as you smoke your secret cigarette.

But I can’t stay, not this time. 

I’m too tired, too old to play out my last years in a story whose preface was beautiful, but whose destiny has already been seen. 

You asked me to stay. 

I’ve never been afraid to cross oceans to chase my dreams, and no, I wouldn’t have been for you. 

Yet, too few times I have listened to the signs, so busy chasing my dreams. 

I will not make the same mistake again.

I wanted it to be you, I wanted it with all my heart. 

I wanted you to be the wizard with whom I could create magic in this universe full of ugliness. 

I would have wanted something extraordinary, to dream in two, to create in two. 

I don’t need love.

I need care, laughs, I need sweetness, I need love letters and funny ones.

Little, very little care. 

And I need courage: someone who, against all odds, against all difficulties, has the courage to tell me “I want you, just you.”

I need magic, to forget the time that ruthlessly runs. 

My passing years, my aging skin.

I need it to make sense of all this pain, so human, so inevitable. 

I need feelings. 

But you never really listened. You never really saw me.

And that is why, this time, I cannot stay. 

Your beautiful letter should have been followed by a hug, our hug. 

It would have been a beautiful romantic comedy with an ending worthy of the best Hollywood endings. 

Forgive me, however, if I choose the faded reality of awareness. 

I will not fly to Prague with you, but a part of me will follow you with my heart wherever you’ll decide to go to find yourself. 

I do not need you. You do not need me.

I know for a fact that we will both survive. 

But I will miss you. I really will. 

Don’t ever forget that. 

And even if it does not console, perhaps we have not found love, but we have found friendship and built short but beautiful, precious memories to be cared for. 

Always yours, Poppins, the sorceress.