Silenzio
Few people realize that the word superstition comes from Latin super sto, to survive.

What survived. An empty husk. The remnant of a lost system of beliefs and explanations, once making a whole. It is difficult for contemporary people to conceive of a knowledge that dissipates, a future lesser than the past.

Those who practice a superstition do not know what they are doing. They do not know why, they are blindly repeating an action.  If asked, will find imaginary reasons. Imitating someone else, they are sucked into in a spiral of memory which is lost in time. However, one can be assured that the same practice was once part of a system of thought.
We Sardinians were leaving objects containing  many elements, such as a comb, at the threshold of our houses, to protect us from the visits of demons and the souls of the dead, that on certain nights, yoked to a restless desire, would try to return to the world of the living. It seems that the soul of the dead person is victim of forced and fragile attention. Given the comb, it is forced to count its teeth. But since it has a short memory, continually losing the thread, it will have to recount them, again and again, to dawn when it will have to disappear. This elementary complexity is enough to keep it at bay.
It seems to me that the very idea that produced that magic comb has also created the maze. A filter for demons. A sieve to find heroes. Only a certain state of mind can lead us to reach the center and then get us out  alive, what is weaker will lose its way. You can not amble through painlessly. It takes strength, cunning and courage. You have to accept that, even if successful, it will be released, mutated into a creature unknown.

Why am I talking about this, you ask? Because  I do see you. I look at you while you circle around me like a hungry fox and do not dare to come closer.  You like me for reasons that you are unaware of, and have never been able to find out. You convinced yourself  that my body is desirable, but believe me: you have not yet learned to recognize what you really like. You court me, tame me with dinners and gifts as if I were a spirit to be placated. You do the things that the others do and you find these things normal.
The phrases that you learned as a child, that you absorb inhaling the environment and that you try to repeat exactly as you found them every night, are not enough for me. Your osmotic language is not sufficient to conquer me. I require an exact discourse. From my lover I demand  words extracted from the flesh like bullets embedded in wounds. Only yours, for me only. I demand that you leave out  family, nation, opinions, the current of things. A lover must be naked.
Do not say you do not understand. Tell me that you do not desire me enough to consent to pass through this transformed. Tell me that I scare you. I am the maze, the comb of which every night you insist on counting the teeth without ever finishing. You can not expect to stay comfortably far away from yourself and, at the same time, reach my center.  I am not that cheap.
You should look into your past. Go back until a living moment of your childhood. These empty rituals that you are practicing with me, used to make sense. You really can’t  remember?
If you do not remember, you know what decision you should make. I burn, you know. Take courage. Leave me. It’s the best you can do, believe me.

(Why do I waste time with you? Because I am also a victim of the same forced and fragile attention. Because you have a comb, and I have to count and recount its teeth again and again. I am one of those souls yoked to the ground, returning in silent procession where, when alive, they did not have peace. Because I was just like you.)