The Black Rose

Prologue

It is said that in life what really completes man is love. Simple men have always tried to reach that extraordinary state of love to which they aspire. Some of them draw inspiration from the latter and turn it into art through a brush, others with a hammer and a chisel while others with a bit of ink and a wrinkled pen.

As their lives are disrupted by societal evolutions and conflicts, they sit tired on fragile wooden stools and reflect inertly on love and what comes from it. Forgetting for a moment all that really surrounded them: an overwhelming family, an unhappy love or a harsh and redundant life.

But why this tiring search for love?
Is it such an aphrodisiac experience?
Sometimes, hearing some people talk, it looks like some kind of drug.

So many of them seem to be overshadowed by the smoke of love and cannot think rationally as they once would have done.

So love is drugs?

I don't think so.

And then... why do lucky people who manage to reach this phenomenal state no longer manage to do without their lover?

Why does this experience overwhelm them and totally isolate them from the rest of the world?

What makes people find themselves in spite of everything?

But more importantly, when do you realize you're in love?

So, is this love?

An endless list of questions?

William Shakespeare wrote in his nostalgic pages:

"Doubt that the stars are fire, doubt that the sun moves, doubt that the truth is a lie, but never doubt my love".

Maybe this is it: a constant in our lives that makes us incredibly... full.

This is where my story starts. An overwhelming, wonderful and sometimes tragic story.
A story far from the stupid questions asked before.
A story in which I didn't even have time to ask those questions. Nor to myself.
Because, slowly, I too slipped into the oblivion of love.
Before him it was all so extremely simple and reassuring.
But perhaps that great confidence that I protected was nothing more than a reflection of my dissatisfaction.

It is a story that has upset all my certainties and values.

Without even realizing it, I was giving that boy everything a person can give in his life.

Your own soul.

This is a story that, undoubtedly, has very little to do with the usual literary novels characterized by the usual two protagonists who magically fall in love, an assistant who supports their love and an antagonist who jeopardizes their story.

There are no helpers or antagonists in this story.
Or maybe you do.
Exist.

It would seem stupid, and perhaps in a certain sense it is, but the helpers and antagonists of our history are just the two of us, who loved and hated each other imaginably. So, you may wonder what a simple sentence of an old English writer has to do with a story like that.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing, but it is precisely from those few lines that our story begins.

You will understand...