Angels' Dares (Volume 2, Part 3)

You can read the previous posts in the series by clicking on the links in the sidebar, or on the Angels' Dares label at the end of this post. (Those come up in reverse order, so be sure to read from the bottom up.) You could also just start reading right here, with the characters inside the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence.

*****

This moment is only just being written, as the letters fill the screen. I know where the story goes; I know the ending--it is beautiful. I want to take you there. But I don't know what happens now.

I haven't known the now for so long, I can hardly remember a time when I did. Or thought I did. There's a difference sometimes, but you don't see it until you accept that other characters turn pages, too. You think you are narrating your own life, but that is only a partial truth. Your life is being re-written all the time. I typed rewritten; I wanted co-written; I mean both. Lives are being co-written all the time.

You give someone love--you are bestowing editorial power. You receive love--it is the authority to revise. The cruelest revisions happen before you even know what page you're on. The crackle of paper, a breeze, you open your eyes to the brilliant naked.

Down you look; you are unwrapped. What will become of your stripped and weaponless heart?

*****

Outside, I was secure in the silence. Inside, I am afeared of the emptiness. How in the stillness it may engulf him, and I--pews ahead--may be pages behind. I have been before. Would he not even cry out if the slippery marble betrayed his footsteps? Would I recognize his voice in danger? Would I hear wrong?

This cathedral, mine; this city, my home. Here I was to guide. And I do, I am. I stride the aisle toward the dome, peer through dimness toward sunrays dripping from a heaven my earthbound perspective does not permit me to see. I can make it; I can navigate. I want to navigate. But I weaken.

Is he there? Is he behind me? He can survive the stillness, as I am in his sight. He proves I exist each time he lifts his lids from a blink. Me, I have to close my eyes and raise my heart to the sky just to see him before me.

Those visions he knows I have, I protect, I believe. But with the luxury of sight--sight I led him to, his hand within mine, smaller, when sight the sun had taken from him--can he imagine the ache of what I cannot see? ...And have no hand to lead me to? With what he keeps of me, can he know the haunting lack of the him he has taken from me?

Hurt bleeds indignation. My silhouette comforts him; I am rewarded with nothing. I yearn to fly ahead before indignation breeds outrage. I command my feet faster but existence slows down. Dust floats, its dance slowed to the point of the imperceptible. The stillness begins to hum, its pitch ever-heightening--filling my ears, echoing in my stomach. Is there air? Is there breath? Could he know if I were suffocating?

My eyes still on the light. Path, direction, vision--I have. I have a memory of his hand, open to mine; I recall warmth. I recollect safety. I hear light and see the sound of the tower's bell.

Would he catch me if I fell?

*****

My heart is as it was when I was born. Crises, I have--they retain power only as they remain hidden. On the page, on the screen, in words--a tangible existence strips their authority to revise my heart.

Weaponless, I am strongest. It is the fierceness of my heart that can always afford you shelter, even when you thrash disbelievingly within the fullness of its warmth.

We were born to slay beasts.

Weaponless, belief becomes the sharpest sword. I know it--but to see its echo in your eyes is to sense the continuation of time, to be caught mid-air, to hear the bell and not the aching hum of silence.

I know faith. I know the brilliant naked. But sometimes I need. I need, too. The pen to my pages bears no obligation--but tell me. When you blink, can you see my heart in the stars?