A boy died. Too young to die. Drowned at the beach nearby. They were playing, but children’s laughter turned to silence. We didn’t see. We weren’t there.

Through a night of luto, we recited the Comedy. Our voices echoing against darkness. Every citizen came, though we weren’t many. In open circles within our unfinished palace, beneath the Southern Cross, we stayed. Paragraph after paragraph, we counted the minutes until dawn. Each word of that unsacred book.

Those were the ’70s. We lived far, far away from everything known. Our homes stood lightless. Just sobrantes bricks from our hovels. That’s all we possessed: earth and the bricks we shaped with our own hands, each one a testament to our persistence.

After Inferno, we built. Redemption through creation, perhaps. Like a divertimento in brick and mortar, a vault arose through spiraling patterns and double-curved surfaces, reaching toward heaven while anchored in our grief.

We’re supposed to die. Old, but maybe soon. We’re just a few, in our small community. At the beginning, only one courageous couple who dared to dream, who risked everything. Then children. And marriages blooming. And more children following —playing, growing, marrying. We were too small, too isolated, too everything and nothing at all.

For men: life, work, and study. For women: hearth, sustenance, and offspring. Balance. Collective lunches where silence spoke louder than words. Rites. Uncommon words that made us feel unique. It was supposed to be worth something.

Yet, the brutal clarity of now. Nothing is as certain as the uncertainty of what lies beyond. So we care —deeply, desperately. We pour this care into everything. With our hands. That’s all we can do. Care. Also care for each other; care for those who are no longer with us. But we can keep them near, like the beach —that same beach we once turned our backs upon.

Here, in this open land, we can stay forever. The community has grown, but we still gather in circles, still recite the same verses, still build our world brick by brick. But some sins cannot be buried deep enough. Below the vault rests our terrible excuse.