LETIZIA IS A PSYCHOPAT AND I LOVE HER

 OLIMPIA DIARY ENTRY

(Undated, stained with wine and eyeliner thumbprints)

Letizia is a psychopath.

I say that with love. Or something like it. She’s pure chaos in boots—wild, violent, impossible to pin down. She laughs at broken bones and doesn’t believe in hearts. Hates the word “love” like it’s a slur. Says it makes her itch.

But she’s mine. She always has been.

She was my first real friend. My first anything, really. The first time I felt like I was choosing something for myself instead of being assigned it at birth like a cursed heirloom.

I was born Narcisia Olimpia Eleonora Maria Isabella Colonna Aldobrandi Normanni of Anguillara Sabazia. Exhausting, right? My name alone needs a goddamn tour bus. My childhood was all pearls and piano scales, posture correction, and perfectly monogrammed nightmares. I knew how to curtsey before I knew how to cry. Freedom was a word we read about in books but never said aloud at dinner.

And then Letizia exploded into my life—literally. She tripped the anti-theft alarm at a department store when she was sixteen, clutching eyeliner and fingerless gloves like some petty war trophy. I don’t know what got into me. I told the security guard she was with me. I said I’d pay. I had never lied before. But her eyes were defiant and full of static, like she was born in a thunderstorm, and I knew right then I’d follow her anywhere.

She came from nothing. Public school. Parents who worked so hard they forgot to dream. She started shoplifting because she wanted things she couldn’t afford—black leather jackets, eyeliner, noise. She was angry and electric and breathtaking. And she let me in.

We started hanging out. Planning little rebellions. She taught me how to run in combat boots. I taught her how to forge my mother's signature. I’d sneak her into galas wearing my gowns while she threatened to punch anyone who asked her to waltz.

Of course my family hated her. She was loud, poor, real. But she was so good it made them choke. She learned to sing. Properly. Trained. Disciplined. She gave up robberies for voice lessons, traded burglary tools for drums. And my Gods—she was phenomenal. Like thunder in human form. The kind of voice that bruises you.

At eighteen, we moved in together. No more chaperones, no more gowns. I ditched Chopin and founded Sisters of St. Rock. Just me and a dream and a rented amp. I knew it wouldn’t be complete until she joined. And she did. She always does.

We made noise. And people listened.

Then came Kunto.

Kunto wasn’t like anyone else. He was a journalist for Rolling Stoned with a tongue like honey and lava. He had wild eyes, wild theories, wild stories about underground festivals in Bombai. He made us laugh until our stomachs ached and bought Letizia a switchblade shaped like a lipstick just because it “felt on brand.”

He married us both.

We said the vows in a garage surrounded by empty wine bottles and half-tuned guitars. We wore tin foil hats  he crafted for us —his idea of trust, so none of us could read each other’s minds. It was absurd. And perfect..  The three of us lived in a beautiful, stupid bubble—equal parts fire and feathers. We skydived into the Endless desert to find a Missing O, the Singing Cactus and the Flaming Tumbleweed. We hunted zombies ghosts, people.. We spent New Year’s Eve in the Land of Lost Socks (an actual place, don’t ask). He made us mixtapes with titles like “Songs to talk to Aliens”

And then one day, he drank an energy drink.

That’s all it took. He thought it was just some weird imported can from  Gods know where. He died before the second song at soundcheck.

Poisoned.

I remember Letizia holding the can like it owed her answers. She didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. We just stood there in that stupid, echoey room, listening to the silence eat us.

After that, the bubble popped. The music changed. The noise didn’t taste the same. We still play, still write. But something in us—something small and bright and ridiculous—died with him.

Letizia still doesn’t say “I love you.” But I think she did love him. In her way. And me too. In the only way I can.

Sometimes, when we’re backstage, and she’s stringing her drums, she hums the wind chant from the Endless Desert, the one she didn't want to sing. 

Come closer baby, tell your story untold,
Come celebrate with us the twenty years old
Oh, missin’ O, through every memory and tie,
Twenty years in a moment gone by.
Like an old record playin’, just echoing this song,
In the blue of the world, and there we still belong.

Like she’s trying to remember what we sounded like before.

I miss him.
I miss us.