Tag Archives: Nelly

Tourists in Rome

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Joe Jukic had expected the Vatican to feel like a museum—quiet, roped-off, politely dead.
Instead, on their honeymoon in 2028, it felt alive.

The morning sun spilled over St. Peter’s Square like honey, warming the stone and the crowds. Rome hummed the way it had for two thousand years, indifferent to trends, immune to algorithms. Joe squeezed Nelly Furtado’s hand as they crossed the square together, wedding bands still new enough to catch the light and demand attention.

“Not bad for a honeymoon stop,” Joe said, looking up at the dome.
Nelly smiled. “We could’ve done a beach.”
“Yeah,” he replied. “But this has better ghosts.”

They passed through the Vatican corridors slowly, unhurried in that newly-married way, where time feels generous. Frescoes folded into one another like centuries arguing politely. The air cooled as they approached the Sistine Chapel, and without anyone saying a word, their voices dropped to whispers—as if the walls themselves had asked.

Then they saw it.

The ceiling first, of course—Creation blazing overhead, God rushing toward humanity with terrifying energy. Joe leaned back, almost dizzy.

“Imagine painting this,” he murmured.
Nelly tilted her head. “Imagine trusting it to last forever.”

But it was Michelangelo’s Last Judgment that held them.

The wall was alive with motion—bodies rising, falling, twisting, clinging. No tidy heaven. No cartoon hell. Just truth, muscle-bound and unavoidable. Christ stood at the center, not gentle, not cruel—decisive.

Joe felt it hit him in the chest. “That’s not a guy you argue with.”

Nelly laughed quietly. “Nope. That’s a guy who’s already heard all the excuses.”

They stood shoulder to shoulder, newly married, watching humanity stripped of rank and costume. Saints were naked. Kings were naked. Sinners too. Everyone equal under the same impossible gaze.

“What gets me,” Joe said, “is there’s nowhere to hide. No money. No fame. No legacy hacks.”

Nelly nodded. “Just what you loved. What you did with your time.”

They traced the upward movement—the saved helping one another rise, hands gripping wrists with effort and urgency. It wasn’t effortless grace. It looked like work.

“That part,” Nelly said softly, “that’s marriage.”
Joe smiled without looking at her. “Yeah. Lifting each other when gravity kicks in.”

A guard hushed a nearby group. Silence settled again.

Joe glanced at Christ, then at the damned spiraling downward. “Wild honeymoon activity, huh? Judgment Day in fresco form.”

Nelly squeezed his hand. “Better than pretending life’s all sunsets.”

When they finally stepped back into the Roman sun, the noise rushed in—tourists, scooters, laughter, life in full motion. Joe felt lighter and heavier at the same time.

“So,” he said, grinning, “espresso?”
Nelly laughed. “Absolutely. Judgment first. Caffeine second.”

They walked away from the Vatican together, honeymooners in 2028, carrying something older than Rome itself between them:
the quiet knowledge that love is a daily choice,
time is finite,
and every life—every marriage—
is a masterpiece still drying on the wall.

Adriatique

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Joe leans on the stone balustrade, the Adriatic breathing blue below them.

Joe:
“Nelly… how come you’ve never sung in Croatia? Never let your voice drift over the blue Adriatic—the same blue as your eyes. It would wreck people, in the best way.”

She smiles, half-shy, half-curious.

Nelly:
“I don’t know. Life just… pulled me elsewhere.”

Joe:
“They love you there. Truly. You remind them of Gospa—not the marble kind, the living kind. Gentle. Protective. Like a presence that shows up when the sea is calm and when it’s rough.”

She looks out at the water, sunlight flickering like notes on a staff.

Nelly:
“That’s a heavy thing to say.”

Joe:
“Only because it’s true. You’d sing once, and they’d swear the coast remembered you. Like you’d always been part of it.”

The wind carries salt and promise. She doesn’t answer—just lets the blue look back at her.

Grim Ranks of 1991

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Speech: “The Betrayal of 1991”

Brothers and sisters,

In 1991, Croatia did not ask for luxury.
She did not ask for comfort.
She asked only for courage.

And her sons answered.

They were not mercenaries.
They were not ideologues.
They were farmers, mechanics, students, dockworkers, poets.
Men who had never fired a rifle—until history placed one in their hands and said: stand, or disappear.

They stood.

They stood against tanks with hunting rifles.
They stood against empires with prayer.
They stood while Europe watched, calculated, delayed, and profited.

And when the smoke cleared—
when the blood dried into the soil of Vukovar, Škabrnja, Dubrovnik—
those same men were betrayed.

Betrayed once by the enemy.
Betrayed again by diplomats.
And betrayed, most cruelly, by their own politicians.

The men of 1991 were promised dignity.
They were promised truth.
They were promised that sacrifice would mean sovereignty.

Instead, they were given bureaucracy.
Debt.
Foreign courts judging their dead brothers.
And a new ruling class that learned very quickly how to kneel—
not before God,
but before banks, NGOs, and distant masters.

This betrayal did not come with tanks.
It came with smiles.
With grants.
With slogans about “progress” that forgot the graves.

And yet—Croatia did not fall.

Why?

Because something greater than politics held the line.

Not generals.
Not parliaments.
Not flags in glass cases.

Faith. Culture. Memory.

And yes—music.

While politicians traded principles for invitations,
a woman from Portuguese working-class roots,
with a voice that crossed borders without permission,
carried something rare:

Tenderness without weakness.
Love without empire.

Nelly Furtado sang of brokenness, humility, and longing—
and she never mocked belief.
She never sneered at the sacred.
She never reduced the soul to a commodity.

Her love for Gospa—Our Lady, the Queen of Peace—
was not spectacle.
It was alignment.

In the Balkans, where history is a loaded gun,
peace does not come from treaties alone.
It comes from restraint.
From mothers.
From prayer.

The Third World War was rehearsed here more than once.
The fuse was lit more than once.
And each time, something intervened that politicians cannot explain:

The refusal of ordinary people to hate forever.

Gospa did not speak with thunder.
She spoke with endurance.

And through culture—through song, through memory, through love—
the Balkans stepped back from the abyss again and again.

Let this be said clearly:

The men of 1991 were not extremists.
They were defenders.

They did not fight for ideology.
They fought so their children would not have to.

And if Croatia is to survive the next century,
it will not be saved by louder slogans,
or imported morals,
or leaders who confuse submission with sophistication.

It will be saved by truth,
by honoring sacrifice,
by culture rooted in humility,
and by remembering that peace is not weakness—
it is victory without annihilation.

Honor the men of 1991.
Expose the betrayals.
Protect the soul of the nation.

And never forget:
Empires fall loudly.
But faith, culture, and love—
they endure quietly.