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It never really rains in Italy, especially when you plan on visiting the grave of your loved one. But it did today.
It had been half a year since then. Grandpa Roma’s physical presence in their small-town home had disappeared, but everything reminded Feliciano of his only other family member beside Lovino. Grandpa Roma was in the recipes for his childhood pasta; he was in the plants that were beginning to wilt since Feliciano seldom watered them; he was in the pictures that hung loosely on their cracking beige walls; and most importantly, he was still in the memories Feliciano had made.
The pitter-patter of the rain gently bounced from his umbrella as he held it over his grandfather’s resting place. He loomed over the gravestone with nostalgic intent before he crouched down to sit beside it. His trousers did get wet with the mud from the rain, but that didn’t matter. There had been a few things weighing on his mind recently, and Lovino was someone who was infamous for not listening to his little brother’s dilemmas.
“It’s raining today, grandpa. When was the last time that happened?” It was foolish to ask questions when he knew nobody was there to respond.
“A very long time. I don’t even remember the last time we had this much rain.” Felicano answered in place of his grandfather’s absent voice. “There’s a lot I wish I could tell you still. I do really miss you around the house sometimes. It feels empty when you’re not there to take care of me.”
There was thunder somewhere in the distance behind Feliciano and the weathering grave, but he paid no mind. “Lovino is doing good, too, if that’s what you were wondering. I know he never visits much, and we’ve been growing further apart as the years go by, but I think he misses you as much as I do. Maybe he doesn’t. I’ll never know. I can never really get through to him. He’s just so angry all the time. I don’t know what to do about it anymore. If you were here, you would have known. He’s still spending much time in that mission in Spain. I think things are going well for him, though I think we should pray that nothing goes downhill from here.”
Feliciano looks over to the headstone as if it just called his name out loud. “Oh, you’re asking about me? I’ve been good, actually. Our town is still quiet, except for that military base that they’re building over Antonio’s lodge. Well, they’re not building it anymore. It finished a while after you died. The soldiers are a little scary, in my opinion, and I used to spend so much time in Antonio’s lodge to find some inspiration for my paintings, but all I ever see through those windows anymore are planes and guns, and all I can ever smell anymore is war.”
“But that’s not the point! Most of them are nice soliders—or at least I think they’re soldiers—but they don’t do much, and half of them don’t understand Italian. I think they’re not from here. Maybe they’re from Switzerland; the land of cheese and mountains! Or is that Germany? I can’t really tell. Well, I know the answer already, but I thought you would like the conversation. They’re Germans, not Swiss, and they’re the air force. There’s no war going on, but…” He turned his attention back to the countless headstones and mausoleums before him. “I don’t know. I met someone, though. Someone special, I think.”
Even in the freezing cold from the rain, his body still heated up at the brief mention of someone he’s been spending too much time gazing at. “They’re one of the Germans, well… He is German. I met him when he came by the market to purchase some of our leftover harvest from the summer, and I don’t think I’ve met someone so nice to me. I mean, you and Lovino, sometimes, are nice to me, but this… I think this is different, because he’s unlike anyone I’ve ever spoken to before. He listens to me whenever I talk, because we both know I can’t stop talking, but when I say he listens, he truly does listen. He follows up with a question for every single word that comes out from my mouth. He asks me about my day, and he’s not afraid to hang out with me whenever I finish selling my paintings for the day.”
“And…” Feliciano whispered more to himself than to the grave beside him, “And he thinks I’m pretty.” He pondered the meaning of his words for what seemed like forever. He curled his knees up against his chest to get comfortable, but also to not stain his pants in the slimy mud of the graveyard. “He thinks I’m pretty. Me. He’s talking about me. Has he even seen himself? Ludwig is kind, and he’s respectful, and he’s polite, and he makes me… feel. He makes me feel like my own person beyond my name. I like it when he says my name with his silly little accent. He sounds so annoyed all the time because of it, but he’s quite levelheaded at everything he does.”
“Oh! And he plays football! He’s better than you, me, Lovino, and Antonio combined! I truly think he should have gone pro, but maybe he didn’t want that, and maybe we would have never met if he became famous and I stayed all by myself… I would have hated that. Maybe it’s a little selfish of me to say that, but I’m honest enough to be self-aware. You’re already gone, and I probably look stupid by admitting all of these conflicting feelings out loud, but I think that you’re still here to listen to me, in a way. Lovino wouldn’t care, or he would care too much. I’m a little scared of telling him. I’m afraid that he will find me unnatural or disgusting for liking someone like Ludwig—for liking a man.”
“If it’s so unnatural, then why does it happen? Every time I wear my cross, I am bound to the religion I love, but it burns against my skin every time I find myself around him. It’s unfair. I’m not one to question God’s will, but why did He make me this way if He knew that it wasn’t okay for me to think and feel this way?” The rain was beginning to sink deeper into the fabric of his clothes, ultimately making him colder than he was before. Even though he had an umbrella along with him, he didn’t feel the need to hold on to it. Nature worked itself in mysterious ways, but the rain didn’t feel unwelcome against his skin. “Maybe I should embrace that nature. Things are made the way that they are for a reason, right? I’m sure of it. Maybe there is nothing wrong with the way that I feel about Ludwig. Maybe there is something wrong in how we judge that feeling. Why should it matter? Why should it matter if I feel left, when everyone else around me feels right?”
Feliciano glanced over to his left. His attention was brought over to more tombstones and mausoleums. He glanced over to his right and he was brought with the same sight. “I think things are meant to change around here, which makes sense. You’re the first step in my change, grandpa. God knew it was time to help me out with my turmoil, but nothing has stopped in here.” He tapped his fingers lightly against the middle of his chest, feeling the pulse of his heart underneath. “Nothing has changed in my heart. I still feel the same. I still hurt when I visit you here; I still hurt when Lovino yells; I still hurt when I come back home from a long day and nobody from my family is there anymore. They call this feeling despair, I think, but I don’t feel so alone whenever Ludwig is around. I think he’s keeping me alive.”
“I wanted to get both of you to meet. You would really like him. Both of you are very similar to one another.” Feliciano felt himself smiling at an empty presence beside him. “I really like him, grandpa. I really do. I can see my future with him. It’s so bright and clear, and it’s full of happiness. I can hear both of us laughing together at another nonsensical joke that I made. I don’t think he wants kids, and I don’t think I’m ready for any, so we’ll have six cats and eight dogs, and maybe a goldfish or two. We’ll live in the same house, and share the same bed, and wake up next to each other, one morning after the other. He’ll wake up early to get ready while I would laze around in bed for another thirty minutes before I make breakfast. I would make him his favorite meal every day to let him know that I love making what he loves for him, and I would make a million dishes for him if that meant I could have him with me forever. Then he would go to work, and so would I, and we would come back at night to spend the rest of the day with each other. Maybe we could go out and walk all eight of our dogs together and come back and watch a movie with popcorn that is definitely too salty for consumption. And then when it’s finally late enough that all the crickets decided to awaken, we would go to bed, but before that we would obviously brush our teeth together and stare at each other through the mirror. Then we would finally get in our shared bed, and we would tuck each other in, whisper goodnight, sneak in one final kiss for the day, and go to bed to repeat it all over again in the morning.”
He giggled quietly to himself as if he were a small child pretending to be king for one day. As much as he wanted to dig his fingers into the individual blades of grass and pluck them out, the threat of having mud on his fingers was enough to make him reconsider. Silence, with the occasional whispers of rain blowing alongside the wind against the world, was all he needed as reassurance when nobody could reconcile with him. It felt like nothing in the world mattered except for Feliciano, his thoughts of Ludwig, and Roma’s lonely grave. A ray of light from the withering clouds in the skies began to peek through its fluffy curtains. It shone directly above the headstone, another bright reminder that Roma was there to listen to him and comfort him whenever. The rain began to settle down shortly after.
“What’s that one saying?” Feliciano snapped his fingers in a poor attempt to recall mindless metaphors, “Cha sarà sarà. I’m sure things will be okay, grandpa. I know this is just another long step forward for the future. Things don’t look so bad. I think I can do this, even if I’m doing it alone for the first time. It won’t be bad to learn how to do things myself for once. Oh! That reminds me, I should probably leave now! I promised Ludwig I would teach him some Italian so he doesn’t look silly around the locals. It’s hard to talk to him in English only. There’s so much I want to tell him, but there’s not enough words I know. Maybe he might even teach me some German.”
Feliciano slowly began to prop himself up against his ankles, slowly rising from the muddy indent he left against the ground beside his grandfather’s resting place. He grabbed his umbrella in his hand before waving it over his shoulders to protect him from the light sheets of rain. “I’ll bring flowers next time, grandpa. I didn’t today because I didn’t want the petals to get hurt with this heavy rain, even though it's not really raining anymore.”
He took one small step forward, following over with his other foot. He paused a few feet away from the stone before he smiled one last time at the memorial of his grandfather. Suddenly, the rain didn’t seem so cold anymore.