Angels' Dares (Volume 2, Part 1)

You can read the first volume of this series...

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Or begin with this installment, if you'd prefer.

*****




The days of our years are three score years and ten.
-Psalm 90:10

Midway life’s journey I was made aware
That I had strayed into a dark forest,
And the right path appeared not anywhere.
Ah, tongue cannot describe how it oppressed,
This wood, so harsh, dismal and wild, that fear
At thought of it strikes now in my breast.
-Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Canto I: 1-6

*****

I knew they would match. Not just sweeping firmament, but dabs of ochre like Tuscan morning as it glints off the marble of the bell tower. His eyes, like my words, born here, just outside the shadow of il campanile, a beckoning to the four quarters of Florence.

In Via di Campanile, I am grounded. In this light, no one can tell me I’m not where I think I am. No one can tell me the bell tower isn’t me.

Sono il campanile.

I rise, I summon, I point to the stars.

As does he.

But this he does not remember; this just now he cannot see. That which illuminates him in my sight blinds the very eyes that beckon me. They call me forward. I raise one silver-ringed forefinger.

I point to him.

“Dante wrote The Divine Comedy in exile,” I begin, words for him alone.

“When he left Florence, work on this cathedral was barely underway.”

Finally, he will look up.

“I studied here for weeks. Do you know what first I remember?”

He will not speak. He need not speak.

“Each book of the Commedia ends with 'stars'.”

He need not speak when I am here. Sono il campanile.

Inwards, I call him closer; upwards, I point the way.

"Stelle."

My hand to his face, four fingertips, a constellation: sweet skin in front of the ear, vulnerability where jaw tethers to skull, fleshy cavern beneath bone; pulse-point. Paths of my palm a cradle, I tilt his eyes to face the blue. As my lips approach his open ear, he becomes my in-between.

“There, always,” I remind him. “Le stelle.”

Against soft flesh and solid bone, I hold my hand assured.

“Sempre le stelle. Even when you cannot see them.”

I need not grasp tighter to tell him he shall not look down. Instead I focus on the sensation of my forefinger against his cheek, two millimeters of silver the only barrier from full contact. My skin needs no such completion to know his waits on the other side. My hand, I think, would slide down further… and further still… if my inverse gravity were not so formidable.

Do I want it to...?

When it is time.

Not in this instant.

Not more than I want to hold him steady as he imagines the stars.