Sun without sea

We sit here thinking about how to survive another day of sun without the sea — or worse still, a day of sea without the sun.

We put on another shirt over a shirt over a shirt, while outside people are dying from the heat, playing at making penguins appear and disappear in our homes. Annoyed by the nuisance of holiday homework that wounds our sacred right to chill all day after a year of boredom, cursed by those few days of vacation that are always too short and pass far too quickly.

The images of streets without houses, walls without roofs, people without life, the wounded without doctors, children without school — they touch our hearts. We are sorry, but deep down, luckily, it’s only other people’s lives. We can still live above the ground without having to hide beneath it.

We see an endless line of pots without food, stacked one on top of another, ready to clash like Formula One cars at the green light marking the start of a Grand Prix, and we wonder how it’s possible. Do I eat, or do you eat — otherwise the soldiers shoot, and then no one eats at all.

Trucks loaded with food, medicine and water stand still at the border, while bombs race by land, by air, and by sea. They tell of the saddest things done by human beings to other human beings. We think someone will come to stop this absurd injustice, yet things only get worse. We all agree, but no one knows where to begin to change anything, as if life were a game too big for us, and we, so small, can only scroll and look for a chill image to ease our anxiety a little.

We find peace again by cursing the sun and the sea, in a world of children without mothers and mothers without children, of souls seemingly condemned forever to war.

But it’s the life of others, not ours — we can still hope to live happily ever after, or at least to invoke a poor day of glory when sun and sea might finally appear together, as if by magic.

NP June/July 2025
Marco Grossetti