As a child, I was afraid of the inside of churches. The too-high ceiling, the strong smell of candle wax and the wide-open eyes of the saints looking beneath your skin were intimidating. The atmosphere and silence were also cold. The exterior intrigued him. How could a castle like that spring up in the middle of a square full of rubbish, with broken grass that you couldn't even walk on while playing at catching crickets? It wasn't grass, actually. It was bush.
As he grew, the church remained the same. Her time was different. The boy's was divided into several to suit father, mother, alarm clock, school, street, the earth and the sky. Before going to sleep, he prayed the Our Father without understanding half of what he said. At the end of the prayer, he started the conversation. He recounted his day, remembered his fears and always failed to detail the still incomprehensible shames by replacing them with a simple phrase echoed in the starry ceiling of his thoughts: “You know the truth in my heart, so I don't need to explain myself.” Another temperature emanated from its inner temple. A burning heat. Just the single lit candle and no eyes searching the corners of you that no one could see. It was like this, with a temple inside him, that the boy felt fearless.
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Religion entered his life like his baptismal name, without him having a choice. However, unlike him, she did not accompany him. She lost the gift of calling him, becoming unable to even find space in his intimate temple. The conversations, some time later without prior prayers, continued for a few more years. They warmed, with a single candle, without looking into the corners that only he, the now teenager, could see.
One day, when observing the same church in the square, standing firm, with closed doors and windows under the sun that asked to enter everything and everyone, he remembered the fairs. How could such a simple event almost completely change the appearance of such a rigid construction? If the June street festival was the first option because it was more affordable — with its sweet potatoes roasted over open fires made from the same newspaper that covered young and green bananas with old news, going to the fairs seemed like a privilege. Being able to carry at least money for popcorn already gave those who had almost nothing some weight in their pockets and lightness on their faces. This party made the outside of the church a little similar to the inside of the now boy. He warmed it without searching. Still, the memory came for other reasons.
At these same parties, I felt as if I couldn't feel. Outside of oneself, it was not allowed to like the other —one different, but the same— who smiled lightly when noticed. She couldn't send him elegant mail, because it was him, precisely him, and not her. Square dancing would not be permitted; there would be no room to offer him a love apple; There was no line that would take you to his kissing booth. She had no right to the “no” coming out of his mouth. The boy was seen, now subject, submissive to the cold gazes of invisible saints, depriving him of even trying to express his genuine feelings.
For some, “if no is guaranteed, then we have to look for yes”, for him, not even the chance of receiving no was given to him. It was the first time, at a warm church fair, under the indigo cloak of the disbelieving universe of us observing the confused lives of men below, that he felt the cold within and, with a breath from outside, watched the single candle go out. The only one lit up inside. They even took away his right to no. They left the environment and the silence.
One night, when he visited his temple, he noticed it was strange and moved. He had his last conversation. “So it's going to be like this? Swear that I am and will be like this? Just me… Fair! I accept the condition. I always have”, he whispered as he was careful not to blow out the only recently lit candle warming his uncomfortable rooms.
From a feeling that dispensed with words spoken as mysteries by the infinite mute, he ended his own prayer: “And there is no need to explain, I know the truth in our hearts.”
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