His hand rises to his chest as if something has struck him there. His lips part, but for a second no sound comes out. Then, in a voice so low you almost think you imagined it, he says, “…Elian?”
Your name sounds different in his mouth now. Softer. Heavier. Like he has carried it farther than you knew.
You stand up too quickly, nearly knocking the tray of eggs onto the ground. Your knees feel weak in a way that has nothing to do with hunger. The world narrows until there is only the two of you and the impossible fact of him standing there in your old street, in your old sun, with your old name caught on his tongue.
“Matteo?” you whisper, and even to your own ears your voice sounds thin, as if it belongs to someone who has lived too carefully for too long.
He starts toward you at once, then slows.
You see the moment recognition becomes grief inside him. It moves across his face in stages, almost cruel in its honesty. First joy, bright and stunned. Then confusion. Then the awful, helpless understanding that the boy he left behind is still there somewhere inside your face, but life has pressed too hard on him too soon. You know what he sees because you have seen it yourself in metal reflections and in rainwater and in the rare unguarded glances of strangers: the hollows under your eyes, the wrist bones too sharp, the skin too pale, the posture of someone always braced for the next burden.
“Hey,” he says, trying to smile, trying to cross the distance that five years have made enormous. “Brother… it’s me.”
You take a small step back without meaning to.
It is not fear. It is embarrassment, a quieter wound but in that moment almost worse. His shirt is smooth and bright, your own cuffs are frayed. His shoes shine, your sandals are cracked open at the sides. His belt looks like real leather, strong and straight around his waist, while yours is tied together with a strip of blue plastic cut from an old rice sack because the buckle broke and there was no money to replace it.
His eyes flick downward and stop.
