Angels' Dares (Volume 3, Part 1)

"I never had a lover
I never had soul"
~from "Bones", the Killers

The bedsheets are cool. Cool. I must be asleep. Am I asleep? I could be. Would I be thinking this if I were asleep? Cool, cool, bedsheets. I would not be in a bed if I had not been asleep. Am I asleep? Is this my bed? Cool, these are my sheets. Are these my sheets? My bed. Is it?

Moonlight on my eyelids, I feel moonlight on my eyelids. I raise them to a safe and silver darkness, lunar glints off scattered objects--frames on the wall, glass-covered sketches, pastels, my pastels. These are my works on the wall. I did not frame them; I did not hang them. And photos--I've seen them, I know them, I've studied them, love them. They belong here, on the wall, arranged, aligned, precise. They belong here but they are not mine. They are at home. I did not hang them either.

My eyes follow the light to the far side of the room: windows, panes closed to the floating snow, curtains open to the sliding light--from the moon and the streetlights, on the bridges of the river, through the snowflakes, to the windows... And I know.

The pieces, they fit because he put them there; the bed, feels like mine because it's ours.

The light doesn't halt at the windows, of course, but flits a starry dance across his face. There in the chair by the curtain, forward-leaning, action-ready; pacing, hiking, traversing mountains in a gray-clouded interior landscape--I'd gaze at him eternal, marvel at his body's languid grace, how never does it betray the thrashing of his mind. Yet I shall not keep him waiting. My self-appointed guardian, he wants to be there when I wake.

*****

The story, I remember the story, there was a party. There was a car and a streetlight and rain. There was a church; there was summer and frescoes and light. I was falling, I had fallen, there was a boy. Ocean, electricity, ocean, electricity... blue.

I wrote this story for us, him and me, he and I, we--but that story, it resumes elsewhere. The story I wrote resumes elsewhere, not here. It picks up in a specific place, in a specific city, a seedy tawdry part of town to make its metaphorical mark. Yet that is not where I wake up. That is not where we are. This is not the room I wrote. I slept and he built. What will happen next?

Angels' Dares: Interlude

This is a slight alteration of my original structural plan for this series, but the narrative opportunity was too tempting to ignore. I got the idea for this post while walking on the beach on Saturday and wrote most of it on the bus Monday afternoon. I had intended to finish and post it yesterday. Alas.





Gray upon gray, textures and layers of clouds render this colorless world majestic. I seek upon the concrete below; the sensation of weightlessness lets me believe I fly among them. A glance here--charcoal through a fence; a look down--stone, cement and grime. Up I search again--a shift of nimbus; retreat but not surrender. The sky is a swirling cauldron of the formidable.

And then the boy. Hugging his knees, huddled on the floor, nestled by the fence. Scraped knees, scratched elbows, blood. He wipes a wet cheek with his forearm, dirt-smear on his angel skin. Perhaps he is ten years old. A steady voice and a traitorous tear--absorbed into the cotton of his t-shirt with a quickly raised shoulder. His watery water-eyes never stray from mine.

"What took you so long?"

And then I'm on the ground beside him--but the ground's not the ground, it's sand, packed and damp--my hands to his face, thumbs to his cheekbones, sloshing the tears--and I worry maybe they're cold, but no, he is warm, the tears are warm, it is the rain that is cold, the rain that has come, the rain that falls from the textures of clouds--now lavender, now amethyst, now aubergine.

And behind us, not a fence, but a field of open, a far horizon--dotted with towers, strung with wires, defiant in the coming storm. At our face, no longer urban bleak, but ocean, foam, tide. Beating, battering salt. Far thunder when his eyes glisten, lightning when the sobs begin.

I pull him close and twine my arms around him; lay his head upon my lap and let him heave. Lightning stripes the sky around us. I shield him from the slaps of rain.

Ocean, electricity, ocean, electricity. Ever closer both. Soaking, I hold him closer. Determined, I stroke his hair and imagine blue. Blue blue blue blue blue.

Cobalt, cerulean, aquamarine, azure. Indigo, beryl, sapphire, blue.
Blue blue blue blue blue.

Quiet. Quiet. A lullaby of low tide. He breathes. We breathe.

He stirs, he shifts, he turns his face toward mine. He opens his eyes, and I see it: the vast, the blue, the open. All around is blue. Horizon, sea, industrial landscape--nothing disturbs the sky.

"You made the lightning," I whisper.
Quiet assurance, this boy has. He smiles and breathes "I know."

"You make lightning," I say.
"That's okay," he tells me. "You color the sky."

Angels' Dares: Volume 1 (reposted with the four sections consolidated)

“Take me where you’re going,” he commands. “I want to go there, too.” I’m not really headed anywhere, but I’ll make something up for him. He’s the kind of guy for whom I don’t mind fictionalizing.

I’d been hiking through the rain, and I’m dripping on the floor now. Just inside the door and I need to lose a layer. He nods at me discreetly as the party blurs around him. I had told him not to cut his hair.

Halo snipped, he’s incandescent. And the fluttering in the mirror isn’t wings at all, nor robes of whisper-woven cloud. It’s the undulation of man-made fabric, women surrounding him, spinning their skirts ever so slightly to draw his attention, caressing their own necks in absentminded longing for his gaze, pretty pouty lips praying for the benediction of his eyes upon them. Listen closely; that’s the sound of panties falling.

Men like him are always surrounded by women. Like him? As in, men drawn to me and I to them. We fly to each other when flying means falling, and falling to flesh means approaching eden. And I’m not sure exactly what I meant by that except that taking him anywhere would result in lost clothes.

Always, they excuse themselves from their congregations to address me. They prefer not to be overheard when they breathe challenges into my ear, life-sparks into clay. A sculpture this one could mold with sure fingers should he synch their strokes devilishly with the flick of his tongue.

"To a museum. I am going to a museum."

"Are you coming?"


*****

Autumn night, and the colors of this world are deeper. And our world, if you recall, was already more saturated, dripping cobalt and crimson and chocolate like the rain off my body when I slipped into that party. I found you, as expected: a wicked half-smile, bottle of beer, as many women as your free hand allowed you to count. One finger for each of them. How is it that you manage to do that?

No matter. That door's closed behind us, the party's noise receding. I am hiking through the rain again, but this time it's with you. I speed up. I shall not fall into your orbit.

I'm in the middle of the street and by the driver's door before you've time to reach out a hand, as if standing out of arm's reach means staying out of harm's way. We're a car's distance apart and still I see the horizon of your lips.

*****

Each door slams. Sheltered, I experience the rain as rhythm, and I know he does, too. Sound, for each of us, is sex, and that would make this situation very bad. Or good. You know, depending. I stare at the windshield as if seeking divinity in the ever-shifting patterns of the raindrops.


"Which museum are we going to, exactly?"

He is as in love with subtext as I am, and this I love about him. He lives beneath the blatant, where no one expects to find him, where I must seek him out. That pretty people never live where they can't be seen is a lie. I smile, liking that he faces down fabrication with faux belief, leaving me two choices: lie more, or lie down. I submit to the obvious.

And then skip right over it.

"You didn't care where. You were coming anyway."

Now I will look at him because now it is he who must choose, and there is nothing more alluring than a man caught mid-thought. I watch as the challenge courses through him: brow-raise, blink, half-smile, lip-nibble, the glimmer of teeth, the tip of his tongue as he wets his lips as if about to speak. I say "as if" because he wants me to think he's about to speak. Mostly, he wants me to wait longer. I speak instead.

"You don't have to answer. I like making it easy for you."

A full smile now, as men are wont to show when they get what they want without having to work for it, and the hint of a laugh as he tosses out the question idly, "And why would you want to do that?"

The answer has hovered about our every interaction to this moment, and stretches forward into every second we will ever share: he desires most what other men cannot have. This is know, and this I give him.

"Because you know I make it difficult for everybody else."

*****

Overexposure--bright, blinding. He smiles with lightning; his hand flies just as fast.

Reflex—my eyes snap shut. In the instant of my darkness, four fingers inside my right thigh, a thumb above my knee, warmth--shooting warmth--and the first breath of a question. One sound and I know I will not admit light until he is done.

“What…” It is a whisper.
“…Else…” A low rumble.
“…Do I know?” Distant thunder.

I shouldn’t have told him what words breathed in blackness could do to me. And his voice… mingling with the rain… Some people, you tell things, not caring that you’re surrendering keys and incantations, ammunition and amulets. The bright wisely, carefully, shrewdly store each, until they know it’s time; the blinding possess timing so precise, doors acquiesce open the moment those talismans slip into their hands.

I graze my teeth over my lips—bottom over top, top over bottom—slowly, so slowly. A sensation of my own to focus on. Regulate my breathing before I open my eyes. But he knows. His thumb presses into my leg, subtly more than before.

I open my eyes anyway, turn my head. His gaze is steady, relaxed. Practiced. I am not fooled.

“Always more than you let on.”

I possess as many amulets as he; I conjure just as timely. I can know simultaneously the depth of his irises and the location of my own thighs. I draw my legs together, savor the heat of four fingers between them. Relish the barely perceptible raise of his brows, the dilation of pupils lit only by the street lamp stretching heavenward despite the downfall of the rain.

“But...” I continue.
“…You…” I float my hand above his forearm.
“…Always…” Smooth it over the soft cotton of his jacket.
“… Need…” Soaking warmth into my fingers, sliding down.
“…To...” Heated fingertips meet his skin and skid.
“…Hear…” I graze my nails instead.
“…It...” Over the back of his hand. I drag them, dig them.
“…Spoken...” Deeper.

A slow, tight, full squeeze of my thigh.

Again, lightning.
Reflex.
Eyes snap shut.
Darkness.

But no thunder.
No rain.
Silence.

Warmth.
Sunlight on my eyelids.
Open them.

No car.
No street lamp.
No New York City.

Day.

Day illuminating his eyes.

And a swath of summer sky I've seen before.

Angels' Dares: Volume 2 (reposted with the four sections consolidated)

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.

*****

My hand to his cheek, our eyes to the sky, we remain silent in the Tuscan sun. Silent, but not quiet. Never are we quiet, most especially when we lack words.

He is weary of mortality. I feel it in the never-ceasing rhythm of his thoughts. He grows tired of the idea of it--the toll of so much psychic energy spent, for what? Youth thrashes upon unconquerable battlefields; age recognizes wisdom in roots. He sees this now. Desiring roots, still he struggles silently--something astray, some part of him sensing disjunction, sounding panic in violent choppy waves that rush and batter my shore. On the outside, we are placid.

In this place, I do not wonder why he will not speak. I only know that he needs a guide. Here in her city, I can be Beatrice. Yet also am I Virgil. Exhausted with the weight of his own survival, solely responsible far too long, he wishes his plight recognized with indicators implicit, even silent. First blinded in the sun, now muted in the shadow, he hopes but dares not believe. I merely continue receiving the semaphores. Someday he will see how he sent them. Or acknowledge, for already I believe he sees.

Once, I feared him--not his strengths, but the hollow of his searching, his potential for resignation, his aptitude for despair. Is climbing worth effort when irony promises further to fall? Yet where others see mere meltable snow atop summits, I see an infinitude of sparkling joy--resplendent even in scattered impurity. And him... he sees the light dance, too. Siblings in pain, lovers in optimism: I feared him only as I feared myself.

And so...

Speaking—or not speaking—of the pinpricks of mundanity: what is that, compared to company in the vast home of spirit, next to omnipresence in the heart? Words become superfluous. Pressured, disappointed, insecure, we squabble, constrained as mortals are. But here we are ourselves. Here we are angels.

Subtle pressure from my fingers nudges his face down, brings his gaze to mine. With my open hand, I reach for his, slide my fingers down his waiting palm. Skin on skin, ever more contact, only now will I flutter the fingers off his face. Our hands entwined, I let a fingertip find the flesh that separates his thumb from four fingers, and rub and knead and soothe. I am here.

First I saw for him and now I speak. Now is the time of his rebirth. Though I'll not say it aloud. Angels speak epics in the imperceptible pulsations of distant stars.

*****

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?

*****



I know not the result of the circumstances of this world. What I speak of here, in this realm, is of having found my brother. And when later in this tale I speak of your body, know first that I love you as this—the one who knows; who has questioned and wandered; been lost, naked, and drowning.

For the one who looked to me and saw his familiar, who recognized in me something small and shiny in a place far deeper than anyone has ever thought to look—my first concern is to protect and nurture your bruised and beaten heart. Never do I desire lead you to a place where you’d love yourself the less.

*****

Racing ahead, I am racing ahead; down the aisle of the cathedral, along the smooth marble floor, toward the pool of light under the dome of history, frescoed bright with bodies in Judgment. My cohort, my lover, my brother, he follows me on faith. Faith I know for him is limited—not faith in me, but faith in general. To show faith in anything is a leap for him indeed.

There are things he wishes to believe. He hopes: if he acts as if he does believe, then sometime inside he will.

He doesn’t know where I am going, only that he asked me guide; he wonders why here—for reasons others than the blatant, the transparent, the Catholic ritual of childhood remembered and faith once possessed—but he follows nonetheless. Silent. Attentive. That he would trust me lead him anywhere is a gift to me; that he would trust me questionless and rapt is nearly full a miracle.

It seems forever ago, he recognized at once my sharpest spear and thorn: thought. Never-ceasing thought. Processes I can never halt, a mind I can never quiet. He knows well when and how to coax it to be still. He cannot believe, in what he knows of my mind, that in this place I’d still believe—yet still he follows. In the heightening pitch of silence, in the dimness, airless empty and the chilling stillness of time, I detect unmistakably his sure footsteps behind me.

*****

A stipulation of the Commune of Florence for the erection of Santa Maria del Fiore was for it to be “a more beautiful and honorable temple than any” in Tuscany. Yet this cathedral, from its very conception, required a dome no one for certain could construct. Audacious, the Fiorentini: the promise of glory for a work of architecture none could prove feasible. Brunelleschi found a way.

Cathedrals, my love, are metaphors—as are houses of the flesh. And not just in literature, but in their very being. Cathedrals are brazen, lifting human toward divine. Bodies are brazen, uniting spirit through flesh. You and I, we know these divisions for what they are: man-made. Culturally constructed. Deceptive. Limiters of the brazen, inducers of despair. They know not all cathedrals reach so high. We know not all bodies touch the sky.

But do I believe in this God they portray? In this construct, in this dogma? Examine your own heart and know mine. The god I believe in is the hope that I may live reveling in the quotidian—that the mundanities in my life might inspire lightness rather than the thrashing of my spirit. This occurs only for those who believe they are where they belong. Once this was a possibility unimaginable. And then: my visitation.

Angels bear messages from the divine.

*****

Closer, ever closer—I can’t breathe but I can see—the silence so shrill it slices my insides; the empty, so hot-heavy, I’m melting at my knees. It’s there, though, as I knew it would be—the sun through the skylight, the dome overhead—the dust, again, dancing, now faster, now mesmerizing, now hypnotizing, now time.

Time.

It comes back. Back in a rush, like the speeding, the pounding of footsteps behind me, like the break in the rhythm of the shoes on my feet, like the momentum of my body lurching forward into light—like the pop of the silence and the rushing of air, the spinning of the dome and the pivot my body and the blues and the greens in the frescoes like the ardent rushing of a swirling sea. And my drowning body falling from it, sure of nothing—nothing, nothing but the sharpness and the saturation and the certainty of the very last thing I see: that the fierceness of his being jumps space and I know—know—had he but the power, he’d choose unflinchingly to take this fall for me.

I’m in a spin, one foot in the air, when the other slips out from under me. My insides course cold as I take to the air. It is blackness now, and space—and the whole of me, tense, in anticipation of the parallel. Air whooshes, and in the instant I imagine the cruel slap of marble, there is a tightness in my stomach.

No--not in my stomach, but around it, one arm and then another across my chest as my leading, traitorous, balanceless shoulder thuds his breastbone. I am not falling, I think, as my feet hit the floor, I am not falling--but my knees are as treacherous as my failed equilibrium and I am falling, they are buckling, my weight collapsing, his arms tightening, and when I collapse his body’s behind me, his body’s against me, his body is my bumper and my pillow and my shield, and I am not. Falling. I am not falling.

My head falls back to his shoulder, his breath warm on my cheek. There is only blackness--and his heartbeat at my back, pulsing hotly, surprisingly, redressingly into me when experience had anticipated the icy rocky wallop. Darkness takes my consciousness. Yet I know, tonight, it is he that will be seeing stars.

Angels' Dares (Volume 2, Part 4)

I know not the result of the circumstances of this world. What I speak of here, in this realm, is of having found my brother. And when later in this tale I speak of your body, know first that I love you as this—the one who knows; who has questioned and wandered; been lost, naked, and drowning.

For the one who looked to me and saw his familiar, who recognized in me something small and shiny in a place far deeper than anyone has ever thought to look—my first concern is to protect and nurture your bruised and beaten heart. Never do I desire lead you to a place where you’d love yourself the less.

*****

Racing ahead, I am racing ahead; down the aisle of the cathedral, along the smooth marble floor, toward the pool of light under the dome of history, frescoed bright with bodies in Judgment. My cohort, my lover, my brother, he follows me on faith. Faith I know for him is limited—not faith in me, but faith in general. To show faith in anything is a leap for him indeed.

There are things he wishes to believe. He hopes: if he acts as if he does believe, then sometime inside he will.

He doesn’t know where I am going, only that he asked me guide; he wonders why here—for reasons others than the blatant, the transparent, the Catholic ritual of childhood remembered and faith once possessed—but he follows nonetheless. Silent. Attentive. That he would trust me lead him anywhere is a gift to me; that he would trust me questionless and rapt is nearly full a miracle.

It seems forever ago, he recognized at once my sharpest spear and thorn: thought. Never-ceasing thought. Processes I can never halt, a mind I can never quiet. He knows well when and how to coax it to be still. He cannot believe, in what he knows of my mind, that in this place I’d still believe—yet still he follows. In the heightening pitch of silence, in the dimness, airless empty and the chilling stillness of time, I detect unmistakably his sure footsteps behind me.

*****

A stipulation of the Commune of Florence for the erection of Santa Maria del Fiore was for it to be “a more beautiful and honorable temple than any” in Tuscany. Yet this cathedral, from its very conception, required a dome no one for certain could construct. Audacious, the Fiorentini: the promise of glory for a work of architecture none could prove feasible. Brunelleschi found a way.

Cathedrals, my love, are metaphors—as are houses of the flesh. And not just in literature, but in their very being. Cathedrals are brazen, lifting human toward divine. Bodies are brazen, uniting spirit through flesh. You and I, we know these divisions for what they are: man-made. Culturally constructed. Deceptive. Limiters of the brazen, inducers of despair. They know not all cathedrals reach so high. We know not all bodies touch the sky.

But do I believe in this God they portray? In this construct, in this dogma? Examine your own heart and know mine. The god I believe in is the hope that I may live reveling in the quotidian—that the mundanities in my life might inspire lightness rather than the thrashing of my spirit. This occurs only for those who believe they are where they belong. Once this was a possibility unimaginable. And then: my visitation.

Angels bear messages from the divine.

*****

Closer, ever closer—I can’t breathe but I can see—the silence so shrill it slices my insides; the empty, so hot-heavy, I’m melting at my knees. It’s there, though, as I knew it would be—the sun through the skylight, the dome overhead—the dust, again, dancing, now faster, now mesmerizing, now hypnotizing, now time.

Time.

It comes back. Back in a rush, like the speeding, the pounding of footsteps behind me, like the break in the rhythm of the shoes on my feet, like the momentum of my body lurching forward into light—like the pop of the silence and the rushing of air, the spinning of the dome and the pivot my body and the blues and the greens in the frescoes like the ardent rushing of a swirling sea. And my drowning body falling from it, sure of nothing—nothing, nothing but the sharpness and the saturation and the certainty of the very last thing I see: that the fierceness of his being jumps space and I know—know—had he but the power, he’d choose unflinchingly to take this fall for me.

I’m in a spin, one foot in the air, when the other slips out from under me. My insides course cold as I take to the air. It is blackness now, and space—and the whole of me, tense, in anticipation of the parallel. Air whooshes, and in the instant I imagine the cruel slap of marble, there is a tightness in my stomach.

No--not in my stomach, but around it, one arm and then another across my chest as my leading, traitorous, balanceless shoulder thuds his breastbone. I am not falling, I think, as my feet hit the floor, I am not falling--but my knees are as treacherous as my failed equilibrium and I am falling, they are buckling, my weight collapsing, his arms tightening, and when I collapse his body’s behind me, his body’s against me, his body is my bumper and my pillow and my shield, and I am not. Falling. I am not falling.

My head falls back to his shoulder, his breath warm on my cheek. There is only blackness--and his heartbeat at my back, pulsing hotly, surprisingly, redressingly into me when experience had anticipated the icy rocky wallop. Darkness takes my consciousness. Yet I know, tonight, it is he that will be seeing stars.

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?

Angels' Dares (Volume 2, Part 2)

You can read the earlier installments series...

Volume 1, in New York City, USA
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Volume 2, in Florence, Italy
Part 1

Or pick up here, with the characters outside the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.
*****

My hand to his cheek, our eyes to the sky, we remain silent in the Tuscan sun. Silent, but not quiet. Never are we quiet, most especially when we lack words.

He is weary of mortality. I feel it in the never-ceasing rhythm of his thoughts. He grows tired of the idea of it--the toll of so much psychic energy spent, for what? Youth thrashes upon unconquerable battlefields; age recognizes wisdom in roots. He sees this now. Desiring roots, still he struggles silently--something astray, some part of him sensing disjunction, sounding panic in violent choppy waves that rush and batter my shore. On the outside, we are placid.

In this place, I do not wonder why he will not speak. I only know that he needs a guide. Here in her city, I can be Beatrice. Yet also am I Virgil. Exhausted with the weight of his own survival, solely responsible far too long, he wishes his plight recognized with indicators implicit, even silent. First blinded in the sun, now muted in the shadow, he hopes but dares not believe. I merely continue receiving the semaphores. Someday he will see how he sent them. Or acknowledge, for already I believe he sees.

Once, I feared him--not his strengths, but the hollow of his searching, his potential for resignation, his aptitude for despair. Is climbing worth effort when irony promises further to fall? Yet where others see mere meltable snow atop summits, I see an infinitude of sparkling joy--resplendent even in scattered impurity. And him... he sees the light dance, too. Siblings in pain, lovers in optimism: I feared him only as I feared myself.

And so...

Speaking—or not speaking—of the pinpricks of mundanity: what is that, compared to company in the vast home of spirit, next to omnipresence in the heart? Words become superfluous. Pressured, disappointed, insecure, we squabble, constrained as mortals are. But here we are ourselves. Here we are angels.

Subtle pressure from my fingers nudges his face down, brings his gaze to mine. With my open hand, I reach for his, slide my fingers down his waiting palm. Skin on skin, ever more contact, only now will I flutter the fingers off his face. Our hands entwined, I let a fingertip find the flesh that separates his thumb from four fingers, and rub and knead and soothe. I am here.

First I saw for him and now I speak. Now is the time of his rebirth. Though I'll not say it aloud. Angels speak epics in the imperceptible pulsations of distant stars.

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.

Angels' Dares (Part 4)

Read Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.

Overexposure--bright, blinding. He smiles with lightning; his hand flies just as fast.

Reflex—my eyes snap shut. In the instant of my darkness, four fingers inside my right thigh, a thumb above my knee, warmth--shooting warmth--and the first breath of a question. One sound and I know I will not admit light until he is done.

“What…” It is a whisper.
“…Else…” A low rumble.
“…Do I know?” Distant thunder.

I shouldn’t have told him what words breathed in blackness could do to me. And his voice… mingling with the rain… Some people, you tell things, not caring that you’re surrendering keys and incantations, ammunition and amulets. The bright wisely, carefully, shrewdly store each, until they know it’s time; the blinding possess timing so precise, doors acquiesce open the moment those talismans slip into their hands.

I graze my teeth over my lips—bottom over top, top over bottom—slowly, so slowly. A sensation of my own to focus on. Regulate my breathing before I open my eyes. But he knows. His thumb presses into my leg, subtly more than before.

I open my eyes anyway, turn my head. His gaze is steady, relaxed. Practiced. I am not fooled.

“Always more than you let on.”

I possess as many amulets as he; I conjure just as timely. I can know simultaneously the depth of his irises and the location of my own thighs. I draw my legs together, savor the heat of four fingers between them. Relish the barely perceptible raise of his brows, the dilation of pupils lit only by the street lamp stretching heavenward despite the downfall of the rain.

“But...” I continue.
“…You…” I float my hand above his forearm.
“…Always…” Smooth it over the soft cotton of his jacket.
“… Need…” Soaking warmth into my fingers, sliding down.
“…To...” Heated fingertips meet his skin and skid.
“…Hear…” I graze my nails instead.
“…It...” Over the back of his hand. I drag them, dig them.
“…Spoken...” Deeper.

A slow, tight, full squeeze of my thigh.

Again, lightning.
Reflex.
Eyes snap shut.
Darkness.

But no thunder.
No rain.
Silence.

Warmth.
Sunlight on my eyelids.
Open them.

No car.
No street lamp.
No New York City.

Day.

Day illuminating his eyes.

And a swath of summer sky I've seen before.

Either it's a beginning or it's an ending. I can't tell which.

The wonderful wondrous ChickyBabe recently celebrated her 600th blog post with a fun game. She randomly selected 20 of her regular commenters and posed a question to each of them--but she listed the questions in alphabetical order and did not say whose was whose. I was positive, though, that is one was mine. In a way, this is yet another installment of Ask Jill.


You've always wanted to visit my city and see my bridge. Now that you're here at the other end of the world, you run into someone you know. What story will you tell?

The following was my response. Perhaps it is the beginning of a longer story... would you like to hear it continued?

*****

We are at a café full of light, you and I, whispering finally in person all the secrets dreamt of sharing, communicating with only our eyes our ratings of the male passerby, occasionally giggling for effect. Suddenly, I am struck dumb. You know it’s not just because of the solid legs, the perfect ass--you know where to look and how to recognize him… and indeed you do, as if you had known him all along, as those times when you had seen his face on my behalf.

Melty inside, you know I am, though time has changed much else. You know also that I must speak before he turns to recognize me, or I might never speak again--to him or of him. And so I call out that name that I call him, that he altered to suit his public purposes, and now that he is reminded of, every day, his own choice. When I say it, it’s maybe a whisper, perhaps a gasp--wonder and anticipation and relief all at once. Without so much as a sideways glance, he laughs. It is me; he knows it's me.

In a moment, he turns, and there it is again: the ocean in his eyes, sunset in his smile. And though we have much to catch up on, to consider, to sort, it is just as important that you are there. This he recognizes as well. He too must meet the woman that helped me hold it together when the specter of him in my world, previously free of phantom distant perfect love, had me falling apart.

*****

Those unfamiliar with CB might want to check this post, a "Medley" of thoughts, phrases, and emotions from some of her signature (and sensual!) posts, which also happen to be some of my favorites. Congrats to CB on 600!

Angels' Dares (Part 3)

Read Part 1. Part 2.

Each door slams. Sheltered, I experience the rain as rhythm, and I know he does, too. Sound, for each of us, is sex, and that would make this situation very bad. Or good. You know, depending. I stare at the windshield as if seeking divinity in the ever-shifting patterns of the raindrops.


"Which museum are we going to, exactly?"

He is as in love with subtext as I am, and this I love about him. He lives beneath the blatant, where no one expects to find him, where I must seek him out. That pretty people never live where they can't be seen is a lie. I smile, liking that he faces down fabrication with faux belief, leaving me two choices: lie more, or lie down. I submit to the obvious.

And then skip right over it.

"You didn't care where. You were coming anyway."

Now I will look at him because now it is he who must choose, and there is nothing more alluring than a man caught mid-thought. I watch as the challenge courses through him: brow-raise, blink, half-smile, lip-nibble, the glimmer of teeth, the tip of his tongue as he wets his lips as if about to speak. I say "as if" because he wants me to think he's about to speak. Mostly, he wants me to wait longer. I speak instead.

"You don't have to answer. I like making it easy for you."

A full smile now, as men are wont to show when they get what they want without having to work for it, and the hint of a laugh as he tosses out the question idly, "And why would you want to do that?"

The answer has hovered about our every interaction to this moment, and stretches forward into every second we will ever share: he desires most what other men cannot have. This is know, and this I give him.

"Because you know I make it difficult for everybody else."

Angels' Dares (Part 2)

Read Part 1 here.

Autumn night, and the colors of this world are deeper. And our world, if you recall, was already more saturated, dripping cobalt and crimson and chocolate like the rain off my body when I slipped into that party. I found you, as expected: a wicked half-smile, bottle of beer, as many women as your free hand allowed you to count. One finger for each of them. How is it that you manage to do that?

No matter. That door's closed behind us, the party's noise receding. I am hiking through the rain again, but this time it's with you. I speed up. I shall not fall into your orbit.

I'm in the middle of the street and by the driver's door before you've time to reach out a hand, as if standing out of arm's reach means staying out of harm's way. We're a car's distance apart and still I see the horizon of your lips.

Angels' Dares

“Take me where you’re going,” he commands. “I want to go there, too.” I’m not really headed anywhere, but I’ll make something up for him. He’s the kind of guy for whom I don’t mind fictionalizing.

I’d been hiking through the rain, and I’m dripping on the floor now. Just inside the door and I need to lose a layer. He nods at me discreetly as the party blurs around him. I had told him not to cut his hair.

Halo snipped, he’s incandescent. And the fluttering in the mirror isn’t wings at all, nor robes of whisper-woven cloud. It’s the undulation of man-made fabric, women surrounding him, spinning their skirts ever so slightly to draw his attention, caressing their own necks in absentminded longing for his gaze, pretty pouty lips praying for the benediction of his eyes upon them. Listen closely; that’s the sound of panties falling.

Men like him are always surrounded by women. Like him? As in, men drawn to me and I to them. We fly to each other when flying means falling, and falling to flesh means approaching eden. And I’m not sure exactly what I meant by that except that taking him anywhere would result in lost clothes.

Always, they excuse themselves from their congregations to address me. They prefer not to be overheard when they breathe challenges into my ear, life-sparks into clay. A sculpture this one could mold with sure fingers should he synch their strokes devilishly with the flick of his tongue.

"To a museum. I am going to a museum."

"Are you coming?"