Cards

©️2025 Lisa Maraventano. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Cards

Lisa Maraventano

alle api

The Activation

The taxi stops outside the building on Piazza Mazzini. I get out and check my reflection in a parked car’s side mirror. I look slightly flustered, a little old and worn, but acceptable. I have to get used to this reflection. This is who I am now. I turned fifty this spring. I tell myself I am a mature, confident, beautiful woman who has lived a full and interesting life, and that is true. But I also know I miss looking in the mirror and seeing hope, possibility, and curiosity—as well as younger skin.
I am heading upstairs in the rickety elevator to my friend Cristina’s exhibition space. I haven’t been here before. I had met Cristina last year in San Francisco where I live and we had stayed in contact. I had told her I was doing an eight-week residency in Rome this year to study the ancient plays and she invited me to this event tonight. She owns a gallery that doubles as an Airbnb, or vice versa. Her friend is having a photography exhibition here.
I exit the elevator and turn to my right. I already hear the people behind the closed door. I enter and the place is packed. I give my name to the lady at the door and she finds Cristina for me. I am impressed by the turnout. Cristina introduces me to some of the people and I make small talk, my mediocre Italian language skills put to the test. Most people reply in English. We thread the crowd and she takes me to meet the photographer. He is a tall, good-looking man about my age who used to be an accountant or a lawyer. It is very loud in here so I don’t hear exactly what he says. But now he is able to pursue photography full-time. His photos are of life in Rome, the odd little details and juxtapositions seen daily. Cristina tells me he is becoming famous, but I haven’t heard of him. I am happy for him though. I love seeing people succeed in creative fields. This has been my passion my entire life.
I work in the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. I have been there twenty-seven years. I started as a young actress fresh out of their MFA program, hired before I had even graduated. Now I have been there longer than anyone else. The only other person who had worked there longer than I have was my ex-partner who moved away in January. We had been together seventeen years and had worked together many more. But he got a new job and girlfriend so now I was on my own for the first time in a long while.
I tell myself daily none of this matters to me anymore. I am moving forward in life. A new season is about to start and we are doing three ancient Greek plays this fall and three ancient Roman plays in the spring in addition to our new modern ones. I had done a residency in Thessaloniki last summer and I am looking forward to our new productions of Antigone, Medea, and Lysistrata. I am not the lead in any of them. Those days appear to be over.
I have been coming to Europe nearly every year since I was a college student studying abroad. There is something about it. I feel at home here, especially Rome. I have been to Rome a dozen times over the years and each time I feel a profound connection that grows stronger with each visit. Standing in the ancient places, I feel I have been here before, perhaps in another life. An ancient woman seems restless within me, wanting something she lost a long time ago. I feel her presence almost like I feel a character I am playing on stage.
I dream about relocating to Italy one day. I meet expats here every day who have made the move. Yet I hesitate. I try to identify what is holding me back—fear, complacency, false security. San Francisco has changed so much in the last five years. It doesn’t feel like the same place I moved to in my twenties. There was always crime and homelessness and high prices and drugs and seediness. All of those aspects have simply amplified with time. But now there is a vibration of impending collapse—physical or social, I am not sure, but it feels like we are due for an earthquake or revolution. Perhaps one will trigger the other. I don’t really want to be there for either one.
So I think about where to go, and when. I never had children and now I am single again. Free to choose whatever life I want. I feel stuck in my role that is being written out at the theater. On stage, I have gone from lead actress to character parts. But I developed an interest early on in my career for production and have transitioned to doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work for the company. Working with donors, sponsors, vendors. Choosing material. Hiring directors and actors and stage crew and costume designers. When my partner left, a new theater director was hired and she has her own ideas about how to run things. She says she wants my input, that we are collaborators not competitors. She seems sincere but she is thirty-seven, a different generation with different innovative ideas and without the shared history I had with my ex. So she listens, but my voice is not heard as it once was.
Technically, I am rich. I own a house on Vallejo Street. With my parents’ help, I bought it as a foreclosure during the dotcom bust twenty years ago. It is a typical house for the area, not a Victorian Painted Lady. It was built a little after those. The house is light gray with white trim. It is one hundred years old, in good condition, owned free and clear. And worth about seven million dollars. I don’t feel rich. Every month is the same struggle to pay all the bills, keep ahead of the curve. I have missed dozens of opportunities to invest in companies that would have made me millions. But sushi night or a parking ticket or a new handbag or a plumbing issue always seemed to come first and dispose of my disposable income. However, I have the house and a small nest egg. A retirement account. I will be all right.
All these thoughts run parallel to my existence in the current moment, weaving through the crowded rooms back toward the front door. Knowing my place in the story of my life even as I inhabit another scene entails knowing my bank balance, address, love life, shoe size, and all the other details that have accumulated over the thousands of days I have existed in this world. Yet I move forward, dragging the accumulated experience behind me perhaps, but intent on forward motion nonetheless.
On my way out, I nod at the hostess seated by the door who helped me when I arrived. I reach for the door handle but the door opens. There before me is the best-looking man I have ever seen. Something happens inside me. Something like a lightning bolt straight into my heart that activates a dormant hive of bees I didn’t know lived in there.
Our eyes are locked onto each other’s. His are big and brown and slightly sad. He is broad and tall, about six foot two, with dark hair and beard, wearing all black from his black T-shirt down to his boots. His shirt has a V-neck that shows a bit of tattoo over his chest. I notice all this while never looking away from his eyes. My senses have expanded to take in every detail in the space of a breath. The sadness in his eyes dissipates and is replaced with humor. He is smiling at me now. The most beautiful smile I have ever seen on the most beautiful man.
I want to speak but my mouth won’t open. I am blocking his path and can’t move. Cristina turns up at my side. “Pietro!” she exclaims. “I am glad you made it!”
The functioning part of my brain recognizes that she is saying this in English when this man is clearly Italian. Roman.
“Ciao, Cristina,” he says in a dark, rich voice. They kiss cheeks in the standard greeting.
I watch him move, his feline grace evident in each motion. Like a lion. Or a panther. The electricity is coursing through me but I am still rooted to my spot on the floor. Cristina turns. “Pietro, this is my friend Melissa West from California. Melissa, this is Pietro Petronelli.”
He turns his deep brown eyes back to mine, his mouth a smirk now. I rally and stick out my right hand. I dig deep into my vocal training for the proper collected and confident tone. “Piacere,” I say. Then he takes my hand in his and my knees literally weaken. Stay on your leg, I tell myself. It is a mantra I learned from my friend Katharine at the San Francisco Ballet. It is what she tells herself when she is nervous and unsure. Just stay on your leg.
“The pleasure is mine,” Pietro says.
Our hands hold for a brief moment more. My senses overload and I short-circuit. I let go of his hand and move forward.
I cannot pretend I am not leaving. I am too close to the door. “Thanks for inviting me,” I say to Cristina and slip through the portal. I am shaking. What just happened? I decide to take the stairs down the four floors, holding onto the bannister the whole way. Trying to recover. I have been around good-looking men for years. Actors are usually good-looking. This man, Pietro, was more than handsome. It was an attraction activated at some quantum level, something electromagnetic, as if all the cells in my body turned at once in his direction. It is taking all my conscious willpower to descend this staircase, one foot in front of the other. I breathe deeply, letting the oxygen penetrate my shocked cells. Stay on your leg.
I finally reach the lobby and head for the large front door to the street. At some level of consciousness, I hear the elevator land behind me and the door open but I don’t pay it any mind. I am focused on my target—escape. Get through the front door. Escape the swirling emotions and physical reaction to someone I have never seen before in my life. I know wherever you go, there you are. I have learned to make peace with myself and be content in who I am. I know once I get through this door in front of me, nothing will really change. I will have still met him. That has now transpired in this dimension. But the door still represents escape, or at least re-entering the outside world. I hear footsteps behind me but pay no attention. I reach for the door handle and fiddle with yet another complicated Italian doorknob. I undo the latch and try to pull open the heavy door as the footsteps pause behind me. Usually, as a woman traveling alone, I am attuned to my environment, situationally aware. But now I am so distracted and disoriented I don’t care. I only want to get outside.
A hand reaches above mine and helps pull open the enormous door. And then I know. I feel him behind me. It is his hand. The energy is radiating between us.
I turn my head a few inches to the left and look up. He is there. This figment, phantom, ghost. Presence. All my dreams and wild imagination and fantasies and things I didn’t even know I was looking for in another human being embodied simultaneously in this physical reality. He is looking down at me as I look up. I am struck again, speechless and still. His smirk returns and sparks me into action.
“I thought you were going to the exhibition,” I say in a remarkably calm voice.
“I told Cristina I just remembered something.” Pietro is holding the door open now and the early Roman evening is outside, the sun sliding home and lighting everything up in gold on its way. It is about seven o’clock on July seventh, unusually cool, a beautiful summer evening. Automatically, I step through the door into the gold light.
Outside on the pavement, I turn to face him. “You did?”
“Yes.”
He is younger than I am by a few years. He doesn’t have the weathered endurance surviving your forties brings. But he has a hardness, depth and intelligence emanating from him. What is he seeing? I try to remember my reflection from earlier. I suppress the urge to fidget, to run my fingers through my hair or straighten my clothing. I am wearing a navy blue sundress, a gold chain my grandmother gave me when I was a little girl, dark orange sandals. I am five foot six and I try to stay fit. I have good cheekbones, pretty teeth, and arched eyebrows. A long, thin nose. My hair is shoulder length, naturally a deep chestnut color now with some silver strands in it. I have dark green eyes that have little gold specks in them and a ring of gold around the pupil. I am carrying a basket and leather purse I bought on the Via Giulia a few days ago. This is what I look like. I was beautiful once, but the beauty has faded in the same way flowers do. My skin has lost its elasticity, my neck sags, my tits aren’t what they once were. I try to flow with the aging process, relying on good posture, skin products, and haircut to help balance out its effects. But this is what I look like.
“Would you like to get a drink?” Pietro asks me.
“Sure,” I say and we begin walking. There is a little place called Prati Rione Gastronomico on the other side of the piazza that looks fine, sociable. Most of the tables are full but the waitress finds a place for us immediately. She gives us a mysterious look I cannot quite interpret. I think she finds us amusing, but I don’t know why. Maybe she can feel the attraction between us.
“Prosecco all right?” Pietro asks and I nod. It is my favorite, I tend to drink it like water when I am here. He orders a bottle which is brought a few minutes later in a silver stand along with various little plates and bowls for the aperitivo—olives, chips, nuts, focaccia and some antipasti.
I take a sip of the Prosecco and look into his eyes over the rim of my glass. What am I doing here? Where else would I be though? I haven’t had sex since Jonas left in January. I haven’t missed it much. I love sex, but it had definitely become rote with him. Honestly, I didn’t blame him for moving on. We had come to the end of our journey together.
But I hadn’t dated in the last six months. At first I was processing my new status, next I was caught up with the spring schedule, then I knew I would be in Italy for the summer. I didn’t want to use the apps and I hadn’t met anyone the old-fashioned way. Until now.
I know I am supposed to make conversation. I wish my tongue would stop being tied. But Pietro could take the lead and he is sitting there as mute as I am. We are literally gazing at each other. Suddenly, I feel ridiculous. I am a fifty year old professional woman with decades worth of acting under my belt. I can do this. I can start a conversation.
“So, what do you do?” Pathetic. But what the hell, it’s a start.
“I am a photographer, like Michele. He’s an old friend actually. He used to be my lawyer.”
Michele, that was the guy’s name whose work I saw. Lawyer, not accountant. “That’s good,” I reply lamely. I take another sip of Prosecco, let the liquid do some of the work in dissolving the congealed knot of nerves in my gut. “I’m an actress,” I say.
“Oh, really?” he replies, and I launch.
I go into a long monologue about the theater I work for, how we are doing six ancient plays with central female characters and eight new plays we’ve commissioned about ancient women, four comedies and four tragedies or dramas about the same women—Cleopatra, Sappho, Livia, and Pythia. I tell him about non-binary casting and how these productions are all new takes on the role of women in ancient society. Then I ask belatedly, “How well do you speak English?”
He grins, that devilish grin lighting up his dark eyes with his black humor. “Well enough. I think I understand. You’re a feminist.”
“Well, yes. Of course.”
He lifts an eyebrow and takes a sip of the sparkling wine. “Dominant or submissive?” he asks.
I look sideways at the air for an answer. Nothing there. I think. I have heard of this culture, of course. I don’t live under a rock. The Folsom Street Fair is held near my house. But Jonas and I did not participate. However, I know one thing. I am not submissive.
“Dominant?”
He leans back against his chair and smirks again. “Good.” I am extremely turned on in this moment. Suddenly, much to my surprise, the image of me in dominatrix gear standing over this man bound at my feet knocks me out. Sounds fantastic.
“Have you done role play?” he asks.
I am an actress. Maybe I do live under a rock though, because I am figuring out he means sexual role play. And no, I haven’t done that. I consider why in that split second. Maybe Jonas and I were too tired from our theater work to bring these elements into our bedroom. But we never explored BDSM, role play or any of that. We had sex for about thirty minutes once a week for seventeen years, in basic positions, me on top or him on top.
I shake my head.
“Would you?”
I shrug. This conversation is turning awkward and unpleasant. I am attracted to him. Wildly and magnetically attracted. But—gross.
“I think you may have the wrong idea.” I say. I finish the last of my Prosecco and stand to leave. My whole body is begging me to sit my ass back down but my pride is roused.
“Sit down,” he says.
Oddly, I obey.
We are silent a few minutes. He eats a couple of olives and I nibble on a piece of bread.
“What kind of photography do you do?” I say after a while.
“Portraits.”
I don’t respond. The light has changed and now everything is tinged in blue.
Pietro finally continues, “I used to do fashion photography when I started. But then I found I wanted to see behind the masks people wear, not help create them. So I started doing portraits. And people liked them. Now I do them full time.”
So he can speak. My mind is all over the place, thinking in myriad directions at once. Nude portraits? Pornography? Who is this guy? Meanwhile, every part of me that is not my mind is responding to his presence at a subatomic level. My heart, soul, and body want him. Whatever he does for a living.
“How did you learn English so well? I have been studying Italian for a while now but I am still not very good.”
“Try,” he says.
So I ask the same question in stilted Italian and this begins our pattern. I speak Italian to him and he responds in English.
“I studied in London for a couple of years.”
“Photography?”
“No. Literature. Do you know Pirandello?”
“He doesn’t sound English.”
The smirk, but this time it doesn’t reach his eyes. He is disappointed in me. “Luigi Pirandello. The great writer. Playwright. Do you know him?”
I shake my head. I have been studying theater for thirty-five years. I am disappointed in myself. I have memorized over a hundred plays. Over the years, I have played the lead in everything from Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams to Chekhov and Noël Coward. Sophocles, Euripides, Oscar Wilde, Neil Simon. And I don’t know anything about the work this intensely hot man is referencing. Dating sucks.
“He spoke of masks. You should know about this. We all have our masks. But what lies behind the mask?”
I know he isn’t talking about the fucking masks of Covid, but the memories of us all masked up and afraid come to mind. I see Carnival masks, Noh masks, African masks, and the Roman Comedy stock characters I’ve been studying all in that instant. And then I look around at the people seated in this restaurant and I understand. We wear our masks as dramatis personae in whatever scene we are playing. Right now, I have been starting to inhabit the role of offended American woman. But is that real? Or just the stereotypical reaction to playing in this scene?
The bees are humming. That hive of bees he’d awakened inside me as I stood in the doorway of Cristina’s gallery are now a permanent part of my existence. And they are humming. You’re more than this mask.

Rome
29 AD

I lift the basket of roses I’ve cut and sing my daily song to heaven. Shield me from sorrow, save me from pain, give me hope for tomorrow, strength for today. I am dedicated to Vesta, but I sense the Divine in more than our named Pantheon. I have my own religion buried in my heart. It is made from flowers and bees, light and living things, wind and water. I walk along the stones to the chamber where the documents are stored and arrange the fresh roses in the vase on the table in the center. The fire is burning, all is well. I had been given to the Vestals at six years old, and my time ends tomorrow. Hope for tomorrow…what do I hope for? I have served faithfully. This is the life I have known for thirty years.
I dig through my memory to the time before. Playing in my father’s garden, watching the bees comb through the lemon blossoms. My delight as the bees become covered in golden pollen. Then the Emperor stopping to notice me as he strolled past with my father. “You love the garden as I do,” he said to me. I looked up from my seat on the ground under the lemon tree and nodded. “That is good,” Augustus said. “Purity recognizes purity.” He turned to my father, smiling. “Look how she watches the bees! Your daughter is as sweet as the honey they will make.” And before long, I was moved from my father’s house into the Atrium Vestae. I was given the name Melisa. Honey and flowers and bees.
That was a long time ago. Tomorrow I will be taken to my villa where I can do what I want with the rest of my life. A rare gift, and one I plan to treasure.

My villa is on a hill overlooking the forum. The house is not large, but the garden is enormous. I am delighted. The terraces flow from one to the other in a perfumed landscape that must rival the gardens of Persia. My cousin, the Empress Livia, has escorted me from the Atrium to my new home. This is a great honor. By now she is ancient. Her son rules the Empire. “My dear girl,” she addresses me, although by right and rites, yesterday I was the most honored woman of Rome besides herself. “I hope you enjoy many years of liberty and prosperity in this place. My husband wanted you to have this home upon your retirement. He selected it himself many years ago for its garden. We have been keeping it in our care until this day arrived.” Her large pale eyes mist over as she speaks, the years since his death softening her memory for him. She has achieved her goals and can afford some sentimentality now.
“What an honor it is to have been remembered by the great Augustus, my lady. And I am equally honored by your presence here today,” I reply as obsequiously as expected. But it is true. I feel the honor and privilege of my place. To venture down a pathway of years from a little girl under a lemon tree to the proprietress of a grove of trees with nothing more than a smile, good posture, and the ability to keep my mouth shut is awe-inspiring. Even as I thank the Empress, I send thanks to the heavens in my heart.
“I have one more gift before I depart,” Livia states as she gestures slightly with her left hand. Immediately, a retainer retreats into the doorway and reappears a moment later with another slave carrying a potted plant.
I am astonished by the fragrance of the creamy white petals on a plant of dark green waxy leaves. Livia enjoys my delight at her gift. “It comes from Asia. When I first saw it, I thought of you, little cousin, and your love of flowers. May you continue to emulate the purity of its beauty, my dear, as you have done all the years of your life.” She steps forward to embrace me, another rare gift. Her frame feels so fragile under the fabric of her dress, a surprise considering she has held Rome on her shoulders for sixty-five years now. This is the last time I will see her, the mother of our Empire. She will pass later in the autumn.
Once Livia and her retinue leave, I am alone in the garden. I stand on the highest terrace and look out over the city. I can see the sacred fire directly across from me. Touched by the thoughtfulness that went into selecting this home for me, I send another prayer of thanks to my protector. Augustus had been deified as Livia would soon be, but I am not sure divinity can be granted by humans. Nevertheless, I feel the benevolent presence of my old friend and patron. A warm breeze blows through the grove of lemon trees on the terrace beneath me. The bees drone in the afternoon sunlight of this month to be named after the man who guided me on the path to my destiny. I am content. Only the smallest fragment of a memory disturbs my peace. His name is Alexius.

In Between—The White Room

0394413
We hear our number called. We head to the White Room.
Disclosures, terms, and conditions are presented. “Do you want it?” we are asked. Time on earth. Life. Do we want it?
Yes, we agree. Yes, we do. We are very excited. The In Between is beautiful, but there is something about life with all of its challenges and drama, chaos and passion. All souls want to go. Well, most of us. It is always a choice. The pageant on earth is appealing, a game, a puzzle to solve. You always think you can do it. You always think you will win.
The White Room is empty, and as it sounds, a blank space. We are in the center of it.
We are nervous, excited, and full of anticipation for our next adventure. We are on our soul’s journey. Right now in the In Between, we are one—complete and whole. But we signed up for this ages ago. A soul cycle. Why not? What else is there to do?
And so it is time to draw our cards.
The White Room’s walls become a riot of color as it is filled with thousands of cards to choose from. We will draw seven of them.
We know each card has a flip side so it is imperative to choose carefully. Body, mind, heart. Occupation, art, identity. And then one last wild card. This is the hand of cards we will play during our next experience of time on earth.
Time is created and an illusion, but to encapsulate the experience into conventional language we use the concept of time. Here, in the In Between, there is no time. Every day lasts forever. In all dimensions except one, every day lasts forever. Time is recorded and playable, is currently being played out. But this distracts from the retelling of one specific story, which is what we are doing now.
We are communicating with each other, really with ourself as we are still one. But the energy is already starting to divide in mitosis. We start to create a current, a flowing circuit of energy. Yin and yang, polarity, duality, the separation begins.
Yang draws first for body. You are a man. The recounting of the process has fallen to Yin—I. I will be a woman. This is not always the case, but in this case what we choose. Our soul tends to choose similar experiences for each round. Playing the same game over and over, improving at it as we go along. This is our seventh attempt, and if we do well, we will finish the cycle. This is why we are so excited.
We lost last time. Very badly. But we learned a lot and are prepared to try again.
I see you in your body. Tall, handsome, with dark eyes and hair. A beard. Hair on your chest, legs, and groin. Broad shoulders. My body—average height for a woman, long chestnut hair, green eyes, slender and strong. The flip side is revealed. You will have poor health and physical pain. My health will never fail.
I draw for mind. I choose intelligence. You are intuitive. The reverse reveals I overthink to the point of madness which I must constantly battle. You feel the world’s sorrows deeply.
Heart. You choose a wall of protection for your heart to try to shield you from the sorrow, but this wall also confines you as much as protects you. My heart is unguarded, open to whatever happens, including attack.
Occupation, art. We choose a pair so our art is our occupation. You capture moments in time while I flow through the narrative inhabiting character. Identity—Roman, Californian. Our birth years are written on the back and the stars chart the course of this journey. The wild card shows a doorway, but we don’t know what this means. We will play the cards we are dealt. Let the games begin.

The Activation, Part II

Pietro reaches to the silver wine stand for the bottle and pours the last two glasses of our Prosecco. “Would you like to have dinner with me?” he asks.
I consider. I don’t want this to end, but I am also not sure I want it to start. Because I can tell this man will be trouble for me. He already is. The bees are buzzing inside and I feel more alive than I have in decades. And all we’ve done is met and had drinks. “Sure,” I say before I let doubt and common sense win. “Here?”
“No, I know a place. Good view on a hill,” he says and gestures to the waitress. He pays the check. I stand and follow him. Then we are walking side by side to where he has parked his car. I memorize the rhythm of his footsteps, how his boots sound against the cobblestones. We get in the Alfa-Romeo coupe and he drives like an Italian man. I am used to it by now from taxi rides and I am a bit of an aggressive driver myself. I trust the process. This is how people drive in Rome.
He has some music on that I have never heard.
“Who is this?” I ask.
“You will have to discover it,” he smiles. I want to reach over and discover the texture of his beard. Or touch his hand. Or his leg. Night has fallen and the streetlights give a golden glow to the dark. I resist getting out my phone to capture the song. I will remember the lyrics and look it up later. The song is Russia on Ice, magical. We drive about fifteen minutes, uphill to a place northwest.
I am not hungry. There is only one thing I want. I want him. Every fiber of my being is singing for him. I don’t want to talk, to get to know him, or let him know me. It is already too late for that. We know each other inside out.
Does he feel it? Am I nuts?
The black Alfa-Romeo purrs to a halt. He turns the car off and there is silence. “The restaurant is there,” he says pointing to a place lit up a hundred feet away. “Do you want to go?”
He has turned to look at me. He feels it too. I might be nuts, but he feels it too.
How do I answer? I hear unfamiliar words slip out. “Come preferisci.” Whatever you want.
Pietro’s dark eyes are obscured by the shadows. But I feel them drilling into me. His smile is illuminated by the streetlight, disembodied. I move my left hand from my lap, turn it over and let it hover over the emergency brake. He runs his palm lightly over mine, the first time he has touched me since our initial handshake. I watch this in the streetlight, hypnotized by the beauty of these two hands outlined in shadow. Our palms are hot, the energy increases as he moves his fingertips over mine. Neither of us speaks or hurries, enjoying the pleasure of feeling the heat build up between our two hands. His hand is shaped like mine, only bigger. He turns my hand over, lightly runs his fingertips along the top. I have never experienced intense sexual pleasure from my hand before. My whole body is electric now. A tiny part of my consciousness is saying beware, but I ignore her. The die is cast.
“I would like to take you somewhere very messy,” he says.
“Va bene.”
He starts the car again and we drive another ten minutes to a place with a large iron gate. He hits a button on a remote control and we drive through. I have never been to a house in Rome before. Everyone I have ever met lives in an apartment. But this is more than a house. It is a modern villa.
He pulls the car to a stop on the circular drive by the front door. He gets out and comes around to open my door, suddenly the gentleman. I know it is a mask, a momentary disguise.
I can’t believe I am doing this, but I can’t see any other choice. Of course, I could have said no. Or we could have gone to the restaurant. It is not that I didn’t have other choices. And I think Pietro would have been gentlemanly, taken me to dinner. Let me go from the bar. But that is not what I mean. The only choice I had in the story of my life was to go with Pietro to this beautiful fucking hilltop villa. The anticipation of what will happen next sends another surge of electricity through me.
We walk through the front door and I see the mess he referred to which turns me on even more. He is redoing his bookshelves. There are books everywhere. We walk past the mess to the back of the house. He flips on a light in the large kitchen and hits another switch that gets music playing. More from the same band as in the car. “Are you thirsty?” he asks. “Hungry?” But he is already getting two wine glasses and a bottle of red. I shake my head at the offer of food. “Come with me,” he says and we go through the French doors to the terrace. There is a large pool lit up in the middle of the two acre garden. In general, I try not to be awed by material wealth but am still a little impressed. The beauty of the place is affecting. Pietro opens the bottle and pours two glasses of wine. We toast, looking into each other’s eyes as is customary. I take a sip of this wine perfunctorily but it is so excellent I stop and consider it, my mind momentarily distracted from Pietro.
“This is very good,” I blurt out.
“Of course,” he smiles that mischievous smirk I’ve seen a dozen times already. “I know what I am doing.”
“Do you?” I question. “I don’t.”
“You don’t what?”
“I don’t know what I am doing. Or what you are doing. Or what we are doing. This was not on my agenda for the evening. Or ever.”
“What wasn’t?”
“Meeting you. Going out. Coming to your house. This is not like me at all.”
“But maybe it is exactly like you. You simply hadn’t met me yet.”
“Yes, I think that is right. I would only do this with you. It’s like I’ve known you before, although I know I never met you before tonight.”
“Yes. I feel that too.”
“You do? I thought I was crazy.”
“Crazy, huh? Probably. Most of us are.”
We are standing facing each other on the terrace, the light from the swimming pool casting all in blue. We finish our glasses of wine and set them down. An old Etta James song comes on, A Sunday Kind of Love. Pietro reaches his hand out and we start dancing, a simple swaying dance, our bodies immediately matching each other’s rhythm. He touches my hair as the song ends and Weird Fishes by Radiohead comes on. I happen to love this song. And having my hair touched. I am basically coming right then and there. I think that is possible. Something is happening down there, waves of pleasure surging through my body.
And then he kisses me.
Describing with words something so visceral, tactile, ethereal, transcendent limits the experience into the definition of those words. And this is impossible. It is an unlimited experience. This kiss bends the laws of physics, time and space and gravity and nuclear forces, into the shape of the universe and we are at its center. We are the original explosion. Little do I know the literal truth of that in this moment. This is only my perception in the experience of the kiss. His lips are made for mine, mine for his. A perfect kiss. A small part of my mind registers the rarity of this occurrence but nearly all of me is consumed by the moment. I am out of my mind, into the other parts of myself, which is a great release. The prison of my mind is suffocating sometimes, a lot of times. I want out. I want to be free of thought and analysis and reason and rationale. I want to feel, perceive, exist without the constant stream of consciousness—thought—overriding the other aspects of life.
And so in this moment I am free. I am the kiss. We are the kiss. But there is no we. We are one. Singular. I, without ego.
The taste of the wine is perfect complement to our own taste. His hands are in my hair, then a finger sliding down my neck. How does he know how to touch me so perfectly? Do I own the same knowledge about him, the same instinct rather? I must stay out of my mind, simply feel my way through this moment. My hands on his beard, the way I envisioned in the car. It is soft and silky instead of coarse. I slide my palms down the sides of his neck, across his shoulders, to his chest. Our mouths haven’t left each other until now but something in touching his chest causes a small moan to escape from him. He breaks off the kiss for a second to take his shirt off. He wants my hands on his bare skin, I sense this and freely give to him. The whole experience becomes like this, generous. Pouring out love and pleasure instead of taking for myself. There is nothing transactional but everything reciprocal, the perfect exchange as he pours love and pleasure into me that matches what I pour into him, and matches my deepest desires and fantasies.
I stop kissing his mouth to admire his chest, moving my lips to his collarbone. Then I lift my head and continue running my hands over his torso.
His chest is hairy, and I like that. I have only been with smooth-chested men before. There is something primal, animal, sensual about his hairy chest. I see the tattoo over his heart but can’t decipher it in this light. Black ink above his left nipple. His nipples are not flat, protruding a little from the chest, looking happy in their nest of hair. I look up at his unmasked face, filled with pleasure. I lightly run my index fingertip over the pale pink skin, watch it stiffen.
We are still standing on the terrace. Neither of us speaks or hurries, enjoying the pleasure of feeling the heat build up between our two bodies of energy. I really have never done this before, made love slowly. It does feel like fusion. Atoms combining to manifest reactant energy. I don’t want to get back in my mind enough to even compare this experience to my other sexual encounters, to think how we didn’t make love—we had sex, fucked—and how we were always just looking to come. This is incredibly different.
This is how it was always meant to be.
This is how it is always meant to be.
This is how it will always mean to be.
These Are the Days by Van Morrison is playing on his sound system now and I am conscious enough to recognize the perfection of the lyrics against the music of this moment. Pietro takes my hand and leads me back through the kitchen to the staircase. I follow him up the stairs and into his bedroom. The recorded music isn’t playing in here, but we make our own. I sense space singing, galaxies aligned at either end of the universe turning in time to this precise moment. I am well beyond thought and consciousness. There is a bed and ceiling and walls and sheets and pillows but I take no notice of any of this. I am simply alive, existent.
Clothes come off easily. Sandals, dress, necklace, bra and panties. His boots and socks, pants and belt. We are free from these constraints, naked skin against naked skin. His body is on top of mine on the bed, hands on either side of my head entwined with his, lips on mine, legs between mine, chest against mine. Yet there is now no his and mine because I feel what he is feeling and he feels me. Exchange of inhabitance, mergence. Tongues tasting each other. I feel his hardness against me, not only his penis but his entire body hard and strong. I am soft and strong. There is no weakness.
He enters me.
I envelop him.
And then there is wholeness, completion.
We don’t move, feeling this union beyond the physical that the physical must initiate. I saw a painting once in the Musée d’Orsay by Gustave Courbet called “The Origin of the World.” It was a woman’s sex and body rather graphically depicted. But I feel this now, that I contain the origin of the world within me and that Pietro, hard as stone, is bringing the world to life, life to the world, the fire of Prometheus, the thunderbolt of Jupiter, awakening the life force that has slept inside.
He thrusts and I respond. Our rhythm is established. My breasts against his chest, his lips on mine or my neck, my hands break free from his and grip his shoulders, his back. All thought disperses, we are animals and souls only. Neither of us speaks or hurries, enjoying feeling the pleasure, heat, energy building up inside these vessels which contain within each the completed universe. The design and formation, the entire fabric of time and space, the action of its weaving through wind and wave, warp and weft, all particles and energy unified. We enter a different dimension.
Here we are connected to our entire soul experience in eternity for a moment. We float in this other space for an unknown length of time as it is measured in our three-dimensional world. We do not speak or hurry through this pleasure of reconnecting to our authentic and complete self.
And then we are hurtled back, startlingly quickly, into the matrix—two bodies again, two different lives and identities and histories and futures. We who shared something so exquisite must now exist as our separated entities. We lie together in stillness for a few moments, returning to consciousness and mind.
“Would you like something to eat?”
I smile a little. Typical Italian, if not all human, response. “Sure,” I say. “I could eat.”

We head back downstairs and snack on bread and cheese, figs and peaches. Almonds and olives. More wine. Some dark chocolate. Returning to bed, we begin the discovery anew. We go slowly, taking all the time we have, tasting and feeling everything. My orgasms start and don’t stop, multiple orgasms or one long, unending one. I forgot my body could do this. There was a lover a long time ago, a woman in college, who made me come this way. But no one has since then, except occasionally myself and even that has been longer than I can remember. Several times, Pietro comes and stays half-hard, lets me devise ways to get him fully erect again. The night passes and dawn is on the horizon. We go make coffee and sit on a piece of pool furniture I find out sometime later is called an isola, for good reason. It is large and round like an island with a rounded partial cover for shade, part of a sphere. We are in our own world up here as we watch the sunrise.
I sit against his broad chest, both of us naked, his cock now flaccid against his thigh, my pussy pleasantly sore. We are sated. “It does seem like I knew you before,” I muse aloud.
“Maybe.”
“Do you believe in past lives? I didn’t, but when I am in Rome, this ancient woman inside me seems to wake up and be very happy to be home.”
“I think I was a French musician once.”
“You do?”
“Yes. I had some hypnotherapy a few years ago and there seems to be this French nobleman inside me.”
“No ancient Roman?”
Pietro hesitates. I sense he is considering whether or not to tell me. “Yes. There was a Roman.”
I don’t say anything, sitting there listening to the birds wake up. The bees are humming too.
“What was he like?” I ask.
Pietro shifts away from me and I feel a ripping in the fabric we’ve woven around us overnight. “I wonder what time it is,” he says.
“Why? Do you have somewhere to go?” It is Sunday morning and I don’t get the sense he attends church weekly.
“Yes. I have to catch a plane at noon.”
The blanket is torn to shreds. “Really?”
“I’m going to Paris for a week. Work.” He heads across the soft lawn to the kitchen. Am I going to follow? Or sit here naked alone outside this man’s house, a man who is suddenly a stranger again?
“Oh.” I say, catching up to him as he rummages for something for breakfast. He puts yogurt and oranges out on the counter. He juices the oranges. He slices some bread and puts it in the toaster. Just like any other morning.
I feel slapped, although I shouldn’t. This is normal. Pick up a one night stand, enjoy the hell out of it, leave town. I am the one who created the fantasy in my head that it was anything more. I’ve been out of the dating scene so long I have forgotten. This is normal. What was I thinking all night?
“Pietro?” I whisper.
He looks up from putting jam on his toast.
What do I look like? I am a fifty year old woman. I haven’t looked in a mirror in hours. Is my makeup smeared, my hair a wreck? Or do I have the wanton charm of a woman turned inside out, his woman, a woman with whom he could find something real?
“Yes?” he asks, putting down his spoon.
“Do you think we will see each other again?”
“I don’t see why not. It’s only a week.”
“But I will be gone by then. My class is over Friday and my ninety days are up.”
“What ninety days? For the Schengen visa?”
“Yes.” It is common here for people to know what this is. A person can only be in Europe ninety out of one hundred and eighty days on the tourist visa. I came a month early and traveled around, and my ninety days are up July 14.
“Oh.” He takes my hand and walks to an armchair in front of the hearth on one side of the kitchen. He pulls me onto his lap and wraps his arms around me. “I didn’t know that.”
I feel so safe in his arms, my head against his chest. It feels like I have been searching for this longer than I can remember, longer than I have been alive, for centuries. Tears well up and I try to hide them. He feels them against his chest, but says nothing. He just keeps holding me tightly to him. The danger and excitement of meeting a strange man and going home with him, having riotous, intense sex, the separation back into our selves and our own lives—all of this evaporates in this moment. I am home. Whatever happens from this moment forth, I am absolutely certain I belong right here. Head against his chest, wrapped tight in his arms. He cradles me until my tears dry up and we resume breakfast. I go to the bathroom and splash my face with cold water. I don’t look bad at all.
It is going on eight o’clock. I watch him pack. We take a shower together. We dry off, get dressed, get in the car. We get to my neighborhood a little before ten. There is a place to park which is unusual. We are in the shade of a large plane tree. We haven’t spoken much on the ride down into the city from his place. I like listening to the purr of the engine, looking at the landscape past his profile. He was playing Lucio Battisti on the stereo. “Well,” I say. “I hope we can stay friends.” Lame, but the best I can manage.
He takes my phone, asks me to unlock it, and types in his number. He messages himself from my phone. He sends himself a middle finger emoji. I find this funny.
“Okay, now we are connected,” I say.
He looks at me, leans forward, kisses me. “We always were. We just didn’t find out until yesterday.”
“I know.”
“I’ve got to go. I wish I didn’t.”
I think vaguely bitter thoughts about inviting me or cancelling his trip, but I know they are nonsense. “Okay.” He reaches for his door, gets out, comes around and opens mine. I stand up. “I will be around if you want to talk sometime.”
“Until?”
 “Forever on the phone.”
“Va bene,” he says, moving back into his native language, his own life. He bends down and instead of kissing me bites my neck almost savagely. And I fucking love it. I think this is the moment of no return for me. I am lost. Now I am his.

Rome
29 AD

Alexius, the black general of the Bellum Batonianum, was famous throughout the Empire. He was not called black because of his skin, although his grandmother had been a captured Numidian princess. He was called black for his heart. He had planned the scorched earth and massacring of the rebels of Illyricum which finally ended the war and subsequent famine in Rome. Hailed as a hero in the two decades since, he had taken to wearing a black cloak and creating a black uniform for his personal guard. He always caused a stir when he was present on the streets of Rome, but most of his years had been spent in Egypt after his great triumph. Alexandria was considered a luxurious post, a fitting reward for a hero of the Empire. At his father’s passing, Alexius came to Rome as the new head of his branch of the family. Tiberius was pleased, knowing his old comrade would be able to keep an eye on Sejanus while Tiberius spent his time o. Thus Alexius returned to Rome permanently.
I had seen Alexius exactly three times in my life. I remembered each one vividly. The first time was when I was twelve years old. He was a tribunus then, before Illyricum. His family was Julian and the entire House of the Vestals, save the one by the fire, was in attendance at the wedding of Agrippina and Germanicus.
The next time, I was sixteen. He was thirty, returning from battle in triumph. Representing Purity, Rome, and the Vestals, I was standing on the dais beside Emperor Augustus and Empress Livia as the black general led the procession up to the Temple of Jupiter. His dusky skin shone in the early autumn sunlight. He dismounted a magnificent black horse and climbed the steps. I stood dressed in white, holding the laurel wreath, my eyes fixed on his.
And finally, last summer. His father was ailing. Alexius had come to visit. He thought to pay his last respects, but his father recovered and lived another six months. Sejanus hosted a banquet in Alexius’ honor, and as senior Vestal, I was invited to attend.
Seated next to me, Alexius leaned over to pour some wine into my glass. “I’ve never forgotten you,” he whispered in my ear.
I glanced sideways at him. “You should forget.”
“Next year, you will be free. I will come for you.”
He had never touched me, never written, never said more than these few words. But a covenant existed. And seemed to have always existed. Some entanglement of the soul.
But would he? Would he really come? He had been in Rome for three months and I had not seen him. Watching the sun set behind the Tiber, I refused to allow the shadow of memory to disturb the beauty and tranquility of this day. I was free, I was provided for materially, and I was Roman.

Alexius arrived at dusk on the winter solstice. He entered my chamber in the gray twilight. I was not afraid. I hadn’t seen him since the feast with Sejanus. But I had been waiting for him every moment.
We stripped quickly and climbed onto my bed. I turned to him and wound my arms and legs around him. I had never touched a man, any man, but I knew exactly what to do. His lips were on my breast, my neck, my mouth. My first kiss was in the moment of the first thrust. He split me open, virgin no more, his tongue and cock inside me simultaneously. After twenty years of waiting, I was ready.
We made up for lost time during the long night. When he was soft, his fingers penetrated me or he used his mouth, making me come again and again. I entered a state of continuous ecstasy. Floating on clouds, my mind empty, my body the conduit of intense pleasure, Alexius and I continued like this for hour upon hour. He filled my body with hardness and fluid and I reciprocated, clenching him deep inside and covering him with wetness. Neither of us had ever experienced anything like this, this endless cycle of arousal, rhythm, climax, floating, descent, arousal.
As the weeks passed, our wild nights filled me with an intense love. My heart sang as it aged the slowly turning space of winter. Every evening, Alexius arrived as the sun set behind the river at the bottom of the hill. We fell into bed and passed the dark hours in tempest and glory. When March arrived and the hours of daylight grew longer than night, we knew it was time to make it official.
For us, this meant receiving permission from the Emperor. Tiberius, on Capri.

In Between—The Strategy

We enter the council room with our hand of cards. Here we meet ourselves, our former incarnations. We all share the same soul code, a sequence of metaphysical programming similar to the genetic code our physical bodies will have. This is electromagnetic frequency that is specific to us. At any point in time, there is only one on the planet. Our counterpart contains its perfect reflection, the double helix of energy which is visible to the human eyes through water. Few notice.
In the room are the energetic echoes of our previous selves. A little girl, an old man, other couples. We are heading into our seventh life.
We all know the goal is to embody unconditional love. But all of us have failed. We ask about the pitfalls.
“I spoiled her,” says the old man, “and then she wouldn’t listen.”
The general speaks, “My position meant more to me than my integrity.”
“My success,” says one. “My pride,” says another.
Two are quiet. They have nothing to say. They are from the sixth incarnation, a time of terrible war and violence which dominated their lives then destroyed them both. The ones who came closest to unconditional love say this, “When in doubt, go within.”
It is time to play.
We inhabit our avatars in the matrix. We are born. Ten years apart. Different countries. Different but similar experiences of childhood, mirrored traumas and triumphs. All souls go through this. There is trauma to the spirit that causes core wounds. These wounds must be healed during the cycle. Rejection and abandonment. Verbal, emotional, physical, sexual abuse or misuse. Neglect. These are the most common. This happens to everyone who incarnates.
We choose to come.
Which is real, the good times or the bad? Both are real. And we choose to come. We must survive these wounding traumas then recover from them, experiencing growth. These are our triumphs. This is the game. But we don’t know any of this at the outset. It is a process of discovery over time.
There are no wrong choices. Every decision point branches off an alternate reality into infinity. But, conversely, that makes it impossible to choose wrong. And therefore there is only one path, one reality, for this particular avatar. This is this story. There is no other possibility in this reality.
We are always exactly where we are meant to be.
It is part of the polar design that the wounds are often inflicted by those who would never wish to harm you. When judged only by our faults, who is worthy? Is the good overshadowed by the bad? Is light overshadowed by darkness? One light penetrates the darkness. All depends on perception which is entirely within. What catalyst or programming causes destruction, violence? Rebellion caused one child to kill the other one. Unintended outcome, unforeseen grief.
This is the beginning, the consequence of rebellion. The first lesson our soul has learned. Our strategy is determined by our own counsel. When in doubt, go within.

The Chat

San Francisco. I have been back for a week. A long, dull, empty week. Two weeks since I have seen Pietro. He was busy working the first week, said he couldn’t talk. I google him. He is ten years younger than I am. And it turns out he is the Italian version of Annie Leibovitz or Richard Avedon. He was going to Paris to photograph Zendaya for her French Vogue issue. I am intimidated. But also obsessed.
Except I don’t have an obsessive personality. Maybe I do. I can’t tell anymore. All I know is I think about this man morning, noon, and night and message him almost as often.
I try to focus on work. We have one of the best seasons of my career coming up. Our commissioned plays are fabulous. One hour of tragedy or drama depending on the subject, intermission, then these fucking hilarious comedies our locals have written with song and dance and bawdy jokes that are absolutely the top. Of course we have trans people, drag queens, and cross-dressers of all shapes and sizes, North Beach strippers, Vegas-type showgirls, Elvis and Dolly impersonators. The play with a reworked rendition of “Sweet Transvestite” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show includes a conga line.
We did something we are calling gender-blind casting for all the plays, the classics included. So here we have this woman-centered season and any and all gender or non-binary casts. This puts a whole new spin on Antigone and Medea. Our Lysistrata is wild. The comedy for Pythia, the oracle of Delphi, is the funniest play I have ever seen in my life. I am in love with each and every actor, director, producer, and crew person this year. And for the hours I spend working every day, I can almost not think of Pietro.
I also have a social life in San Francisco. I have Pilates and yoga three times a week each. My parents live in Davis, a little over an hour away. My sister and her kids live in Tiburon, just across the Golden Gate Bridge. I am a minor local celebrity, known by the people who have seen me in plays for decades. I am established here. There are things to do every weekend in the city and then there’s wine country and the beach minutes away. Hiking. Sushi, which I love. My best friend Caitlin who lives in the Berkeley Hills. I should be occupied.
I am in nine of the fourteen plays we are doing this season. That is a lot of dialogue to memorize, even if I am not the lead. The reason we are doing so many is that eight of those are the one-act originals, so we do two a night then. But still, that is three classics and the run of originals per semester. We have a whole new cohort of MFA students I am supposed to help mentor. Sponsors and donors to keep happy. Theater maintenance. Home maintenance. So much to do.
I find myself lying on my bed often, staring at the ceiling. Thinking of what I want to tell Pietro. Poor guy.
We FaceTimed once. Once, in two weeks.
And I lit up like a Christmas tree.

The weeks drag by. I still message Pietro every day, but he hasn’t messaged me first since the first month. He prefers using Telegram which I have had to install. He is my only contact on it. Buongiorno, I say. A te, he replies. And that might be it until the evening when I wish him a buonanotte and he responds the same. But usually sometime in the middle of the day I can’t stand it anymore and I send him a long message or something flirty or a picture of whatever is happening. He always replies. Usually in less than five words. But he replies.
He doesn’t want me to call him unless he says I can. I have to ask. I think that is the weirdest thing I have ever heard in my life. But the second time I called without permission, he blocked me. I had to beg him texting his phone number to get unblocked, and it took three weeks. I am very confused about myself. Why in the fuck am I tolerating this? What is wrong with me?
Yet I keep doing it. He calls me a stupid cow and it turns me on. We talk about our fantasies and fetishes, some of which are well beyond my experience and redraw all my boundary lines. None of this stops me. I am more in love than ever. I start reading books and articles about BDSM and verbal humiliation. I try it out one day on the chat. It goes over well. He cannot not respond to denigration and insults. Then I find out he likes gear.
One day, after I made him mad doing something I shouldn’t have, I go to a sex shop in North Beach and send a picture. He responds immediately. He helps me shop through the chat, I send him pictures, and he picks out floggers and restraints, and an expensive collar he likes. But I am thrilled—literally thrilled. Excitement and pleasure course through me as I take home my bag of goodies.
I start buying lingerie and taking selfies wearing corsets and stockings and see-through panties and nipple clamps to send him. I have never done anything like this in my life. I have never even had a vibrator. At fifty, finding new things feels incredible whether it is trying new foods, learning to knit, or finding out you have some fetishes and kinks you did not know about. I skirt the edges of Leather Week and the Folsom Street Fair at the end of September. I have identified as bisexual since college and dated a few women after college before ending up with Jonas. I try to wear my pride and get myself out there. I am an actress, after all. If nothing else, I should be able to inhabit the role of confident queer. But I always feel a little out of place in the field of fit men enjoying being out. Some of the men are not fit, but most of them are.
Pietro tells me he likes natural hair down there, so I stop shaving. I send him a picture with the caption “sprouts” and he calls me a bitch. I love it. I buy a new pair of boots and take a picture in them, wearing only a pair of lace panties and holding a whip. Who is this he has awakened? I read about dominatrixes. I am in the right town for this. Part of me is curious to try the scene here, but I refrain. I am in love with the Roman.
I think about my Roman woman. I still feel her in me. I miss Rome almost as much as the Roman. I want to be back in Rome, but it is not possible to put it on the itinerary for several months. Our season of classical theater has started off well. I am in plays through mid-October. Then I am supposed to go to the Tennessee Williams festival in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Next year we are doing “Williams: Shakespeare and Tennessee.” I am ambivalent about the theme but our new theater director, who I admit has turned out to be pretty cool, came up with the idea. She is a Black woman from New York, a lesbian and quite beautiful. But married.
I am surprised she wants to do Tennessee although his plays are still relevant and amazing. But Southern. She is planning to cast at least fifty percent African-American in all the plays. She said she might make Othello a white guy though. Or Chinese. I wonder if we should cast racially but we will figure it out as we go. So I am supposed to go to the Tennessee Williams festival in Clarksdale, Mississippi, his hometown, this fall and then to the one in New Orleans in the spring to gather new insights and perspectives as I did with the classical plays. This is another part of my job, something I’ve been doing for years. I’ve been to countless Shakespeare workshops and events and festivals by now. Knowing this was coming up, I went to a few more plays this summer when I returned to the States. Everyone is always trying to do something new with Shakespeare with the sets or costumes. I saw Julius Caesar years ago on Broadway with Denzel Washington in Spanish Civil War garb. The Ashland Festival is unrecognizable and even the one in Sacramento is getting outlandish. Personally, I prefer traditional Shakespeare. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
But breaking tradition has been part of the fun in retelling these women’s stories this season. Although these plays have lasted millennia, they are certainly about brokenness. Maybe we are trying to fix that. Regardless of the sudden confusion I feel about myself from my foray into the jungle of kink, I desire to be part of breaking the patriarchy. At the theater, we are committed to doing whatever we can to bust the glass ceiling, put another nail in the coffin, whatever metaphor applies.
But this is how my mind works. Full of detritus and crap to try not to think about Pietro. I can’t stop. I really don’t care about anything except seeing him again. And never leaving his side. I never expected to feel this way about anything or anybody. I never have. I wonder if I am losing my mind.

Buongiorno
A te

Buonanotte
Buonanotte

I have him as the little ping on Telegram, the tone technically called “note.” I don’t know how to change it. He is the only one on my phone with that tone. But everybody else has it everywhere. Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping.
I am Pavlov’s dog, salivating at each one. My love. My elusive lover. One night stand. Fantasy. Other half.
He says something once about other half and the Whole.
Plato.
I dive in.
He says some people are grown children, meaning me. He is interested in more than sex, he is interested in the subconscious, evolution, and personal growth. I start looking all that shit up. He mentions apeiron, daimon, spiritualism. I suggest meeting in New Orleans in the spring, but he ignores me.
Meanwhile I have been reading the complete oeuvre of Luigi Pirandello, who was brilliant. I understand now. Masks.
I consider dating. I know he is. I have learned when to message him. The time difference is nine hours. He gets up late and does not like to be disturbed too early. He lost his shit on me once for doing that. So I text him buongiorno when I wake up, which is usually about five am—2pm his time. He works during the day and goes out every night around seven. So there are a couple of hours I can message, from five to seven in the evening. He usually goes to bed between eleven and midnight. Three in the afternoon for me. I’ve taken to closing my eyes after texting buonanotte. Find a spot in the theater or my office and just close my eyes. Be with him in bed for a minute. Sometimes it is like corpse pose. I don’t know where I go off to, but I am gone. Not in my body anymore. Maybe with the ancient lady.
Sometimes when I am pissed or confused or frustrated or want to give up on all of it, I tell them, my ancient lady and his former Roman self, they need to work it out. This chick is tired. If those two have unfinished business and are using our current incarnations to sort it out, they need to do something in the other realm. I can’t do this all the time. I am losing it.
But then there are days, most of the time most days, when I am my normal, sane self. Showing up, solving problems. Doing good work at my job, taking care of my house, exercising, eating right, walking up and down the giant hills of my city, eating sushi every Tuesday with my friends, driving over to Caitlin’s to drink wine and sleep on her couch, sending my nieces birthday presents and giving to their school fundraisers. I don’t know how to be more normal.
But my secret self—is she the one behind the masks? The one buying sex toys and sending nude photos to the man she is in love with—is that my real self? Or simply the me trying to get his attention?
I know he is dating and fucking other women. I am not jealous. Or, to be more accurate, I am already jealous of every single moment he spends that is not with me. I am at capacity for jealousy. So I have no room to be more jealous that he is fucking someone. Why wouldn’t he? We had one night together. I should fuck someone. I will fuck someone.
Just not today.

I go to Mississippi and strangely meet someone there I find attractive. This was not on my list of things to do. Meanwhile I message

Buongiorno
A te

Buonanotte
Buonanotte

I send Pietro pictures of cotton bales and blues clubs, the Cutrer Mansion and magnolia trees. Me naked on my hotel bed. The progress of my pubic hair. He puts up with all this shit, always responding. In five words or less.
So when I meet this man, I am surprised. His name is Stefan. I meet him at a party the first night of the festival. He is thin and wiry, not too tall, maybe five nine. He has long dirty blond hair and a goatee. But piercing blue eyes that after two beers I realize remind me of Uhtred on the show The Last Kingdom. And I love Uhtred.
We end up making out in someone’s backyard like we are sixteen year olds at a keg party. I invite him to my room.
This guy knows what he is doing. He goes down on me and I am coming all over the place. But I can’t get the image of the fucking Roman out of my mind. I am doomed.

I head back home after not fucking Stefan. Blow job, that’s it. But he gave me one line I will always remember, the wolves aren’t afraid of the sheep. So that is how I think of Stefan-wolf, like the wild wolf son of Loki. The thing is, he thought I was a sheep and I am a fucking wolf. He just didn’t know that.

Somehow, Pietro knows I have been with someone. I don’t know how. I ask to call him like I always do and we talk for the first time in a month. “You fucked someone,” he says when he answers.
“No, I didn’t,” I respond automatically.
“Liar.”
“I didn’t fuck someone. Why? You’re fucking other women.”
“That’s not the point.”
“I didn’t fuck him. Just a blow job.”
“Still. You were in bed with him. Good.” I am distracted from his words by his appearance. He looks good. I wish I could crawl through my phone.
“Good?”
“Yes. You need to find someone, the right person for you. I am not it. We are on different paths.”
Oh no, more of the paths bullshit. He was into that.
He continues, “I don’t know where your obsession with me leads you.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing.”
“I think it is good you were fucking someone. Or almost fucking someone.”
But now I know he is lying. He is jealous. And I have betrayed him. As I have done before in different ways.
Every time he feels something, he hides behind the walls he built. He said something once about being complicated and not letting himself go very easily anymore. He also said he doesn’t—ever—put other people first, not even a little bit. And that Pietro is a good name for him because he has a heart of stone.
No one has a heart of stone, I reply.
And I think to myself we have scarred, broken, burnt, wounded hearts. But not stone. We have built walls around our hearts to protect them. We plant little gardens inside the walls where we can be happy, lie in the sunshine. We don’t let anyone in. We are safe.
So whenever he feels the slightest chink in his defenses, feels the slightest bit of anything, he goes allontanato, fucks someone, drinks too much, is rude to me, won’t even say good night. But that’s okay. Because I am learning to love someone, and especially to love him, isn’t a fucking fairy tale. And if I really love him, I will not be deterred. I will be patient and loving, with a little verbal humiliation on the side.

The first part of the season is a grand success and we are the talk of the town. It feels good to carry on after Jonas’s departure. Not in a stick-it-to-him way, but that my—and the theater’s—abilities are not dependent on him. We can make it.
There are almost three weeks between our last show in December and the next one in January. I board a flight to Rome.
Pietro does not encourage this. He says I should stay home. But this is my decision. I want to see him again.
I land at FCO and the driver I use, Flavio, takes me to my accommodation. I want to go to Pietro’s place, but I have not been invited. I message him. “I’m here.”
I see he has read the message by two little blue checkmarks, but he does not respond. How did my life devolve into this? Looking at checkmarks on this stupid little box…I think back to college, high school, junior high, grade school. Our dreams of the future, for flying cars and jet packs. If there was even going to be a future. I didn’t believe in one then. I didn’t think I would make it to adulthood, much less fifty years old. I thought we would all be ash by now, the world rotting in nuclear winter. But here I am, in Rome looking at checkmarks on my phone. All of this seems surreal.
I sit in the sunshine outside Castel Sant’Angelo listening to the street musicians and drinking a beer from the nearby concession truck. It is sixty degrees and the river reflects the brilliant solstice sunshine. Sol Invictus, Unconquered Sun. The days will begin to lengthen. I read years ago that anyone with gold in their eyes is a descendant of Helios who apparently got around. I guess driving his chariot across the sky every day gave him plenty of opportunity to pick up women. Who wouldn’t want a ride with a handsome god across the sky behind some flying horses? Helios had thousands of children and all of us sporting the gold flecks in our eyes are of his line. It is myth, but part of me still feels the sunshine light up the gold specks in my eyes.
Finally, I hear the ping.
Thousands of people have walked by me, all with phones. Coming and going from San Pietro, across the Ponte Sant’Angelo. Whirling above the river, the seagulls call to each other, their cries sounding like mockery. The musicians are playing. The tourists line up to enter the castle. And I have been waiting for a little ping which will determine my fate.
“Ok.”
Ok?
Melissa, get a clue. This guy is not interested. It was a one night stand. You’ve had them before. What in the fuck is wrong with you? Why can’t you forget him? Why does it feel like my life is consumed by the blazing furnace of this insane love? Is it even love or a battle of wills at this point? He doesn’t want you. I don’t want you when you act like this. Straighten up, get it together, pull your head out of your ass.
The thing is, at some point I handed over my pride to him. I boxed it up and wrapped a ribbon around it and delivered it to him as my gift. It has something to do with the ancient woman, I am sure, sitting here next to the sun-warmed bricks of the two thousand year old monument. Maybe I should find out what she wants. I cross the bridge and walk along the river. I don’t know where I am going, just following the path in front of me. Pietro should like that. I wander past the Jewish area and down into the Portico d’Ottavia. I turn and head past the Teatro and toward Capitoline Hill. I walk across Piazza Venezia and up. Past Trajan’s Market. I go into the Imperial Forum museum. I don’t know what I am looking for. I stand on the terrace and look out over the market. I have been here before. I have been here in this life and in the life before. I am close.
I exit the museum and continue climbing. I listen within. Just keep walking. I am guided to turn right. There is a set of stairs. I climb the stairs to the top of a hill with a park on top. This is my garden. I found it. This is where I lived. I walk to the edge of the garden and look down on my city. I can see it as it was. And as it is. One image superimposed on the other, and I can’t tell which is which anymore, what is real, what is then, what is now, and if the distinction even exists.
I am losing my mind.
This is exactly what you are supposed to be doing, Melissa. Losing your mind. Shedding your ego.
What?
I turn and walk back toward the stairs. I notice something I hadn’t seen when I arrived. Two figures, headless statues, a man and woman in ancient dress reclining on a bench. That’s us, I see. We’ve lost our heads.
“Do you want to see me?” I message.
“I am busy tonight,” he replies. “Maybe late.”
My heart breaks into a million pieces for the thousandth time. How long can I endure this?
“Ok,” I reply. Italians prefer the two-letter version of the word.
I take a nap and go out to dinner alone. I hate eating alone in Rome. Everyone has someone here. I could have tried to connect with one of the friends I’d made during my other visits, but I can’t be very sociable in this state I am in.
I message again about ten pm. “Ready?”
I don’t hear anything for half an hour. Not even checkmarks saying he saw it.
“Not yet,” he eventually replies.
I wait another half hour and try again. He snaps at me, “che rottura di coglioni.” I tell him I am waiting for him at a bar called Rosy O’Grady on a side street of Gregorio.
But I don’t go into the bar. I can’t stand being around people right now, especially on my own and having people look at and wonder about me. I don’t blame them for wondering, I am wondering about myself. But I can’t stop. This is the script, this is the character I am inhabiting, this strained woman deciphering cosmic truth from madness. Finally at eleven-thirty, I hear the Alfa Romeo coming down the street. He parks under a streetlight and leaves the car running. I open the passenger door and the smile he gives me melts the broken pieces of my heart like gold. It is swirling around in my chest, liquid metal burning me inside. But he doesn’t kiss me or touch me. “I can’t stay long,” he says. “I have to get up early. I am leaving in the morning.”
“Leaving? Where are you going?”
“Out of Rome.”
I am stymied. Speechless. I reach over to touch his hand but he pulls it away. “No,” he says.
We look deep into each other’s eyes. He does love me. I can see it. I know what he’s seeing—desperation, obsession, adoration, disbelief, confusion, exhaustion, despair. “I can’t, Melissa,” he states firmly.
“Why not?”
“I told you. We are on different paths.”
“I am right here. How can we be on different paths if I am sitting here next to you?”
“I don’t know. But I can’t be with you.”
“Why not? Because I am older, American, what? You’re with someone else right now?”
From his eyes, I can see all those reasons are parts of his decision.
“You’re going away with her?”
“I told you not to come.”
Part of me wants to flee the scene, but I have waited so long to see him again and this may be the last chance I have. I draw deep and say, “All right. How was your autumn?”
“Good.”
“Good.” This is the man I tell nearly everything I think and feel and observe on the chat, and I am sitting here like a lump with nothing to say. Finally, I come up with a few words. “Our plays went well. Lysistrata in particular. We made Time magazine.”
“I saw.”
“I wasn’t in the article. But my boss was.”
We sit in the running car, heater on, looking at each other. His dark brown eyes shine in the streetlight. I want to touch his beard, his hair, his neck. His chest. I want to climb on his lap and be held like he held me in the kitchen last summer. That is all I want. I can’t bear it.
I move as fast as a teenager and curl up on him.
“What are you doing?”
“This.”
“Get off,” he pushes at me half-heartedly.
“Pietro. Just for a minute. Then I will go.”
He exhales. I feel the resistance released in the breath. He wraps his arms around me and puts his chin on my head. I don’t make any sexual moves, but lightly put my palm against his chest, over his heart. Where the tattoo is. I still don’t know what is tattooed on his chest. I saw it in the morning at his house last summer, but it didn’t register. Black ink, of course, sort of a scribble, like whatever was underneath had been crossed out. Maybe it was. “What’s on your chest?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
“Your tattoo. What is it?”
He doesn’t answer.
We sit like that, in silence, for five minutes. Then he shifts beneath me. My time is up.
I slide back to the passenger seat.
“Want me to take you home?” he asks.
“Sure. Thanks.”
“Same place?”
I nod. He pulls onto the street and begins driving. It is late now, there is little traffic. A few scooters buzzing along, a few taxis. People heading home after another night out. The Eternal City. La Città Eterna.
“It might have been better for you if we had never met,” he says as he pulls the car to a stop on Lungotevere near my place. “You should try to forget about me.”
I was doing so well. But this destroys me. I can’t stop the tears now, the molten gold of my heart transmuting to saltwater in some reverse alchemy. “Sure. No problem. Fuck it,” I reply.
What else was there to say?
I get out of the car. He does too. He stands there and watches me as I cross the street. I look back once, see him watching me from under the streetlight. He is dressed in black, leather jacket, pants, boots. The light rains over him in gold. I turn away and walk out of sight. I hear the car start up and speed off into the distance. It is over.

I wake up. It is morning in Rome. The twenty-third of December. I need to get out of here. Where can I go? I haven’t even unpacked yet. But I take all of the sex gear and lingerie I brought with me and put them in a plastic shopping bag. I put in the bottle of perfume I’ve been wearing that I bought last summer at the Neiman Marcus on Union Square. It is called Roman Nights by Bulgari. I head out of my hotel toward Saint Peter’s. I drop the bag into the Tiber as I cross the bridge, feeling vaguely guilty for littering but enjoying the symbolism. A moment flashes when I think of joining it, but I refrain. The hive of bees inside stops me.
I need help, I tell the Universe.
It is already waiting for you, I hear in reply.
I walk up the Via della Conciliazione and wonder if I can ever be reconciled, recover from this delusion. I enter the piazza. The fountains flow in silvery water and the Christmas tree holds center place. The obelisk called The Witness shines brightly in the morning sunlight. And then I hear my name called.
“Melissa?”
I look around.
Walking toward me is an overweight bald man I don’t recognize. But when he gets closer, I see his eyes and I know him. It is Rob.
Rob is the guy I dated in college after my girlfriend broke up with me. I haven’t seen him in thirty years.
He folds me in his arms in a bear hug. I cling to him for a few moments then we step back and hold each other’s hands.
“How are you?” he asks.
“Okay. About the same as when we met.”
“Uh-oh.” He had been there to pick up the pieces then too.
I shrug. “How about you? How are you? What are you doing in Rome?”
He smiles. “Well, I married a French woman and we were together about twenty years. Got divorced a few years ago, but we have a seventeen year old daughter so I have stayed in France. I come to Rome every year around Christmas to see the lights.”
Not what I would have guessed would happen to this guy. He was All-American. “Oh,” is the only thing I can think to say.
“Are you here on your own then?” he asks.
I nod.
“Well, not anymore. Come on, let’s get some coffee.”
I follow him to a cafe on the corner and he orders cappuccinos for us. “All right, tell me all about it,” he says once the waiter walks away.
I tell him enough. Heartbroken, in Rome, alone for the holidays.
“Well, come home with me then,” he smiles. “We’ll have a good time.”
“You’re on your own?”
“Yep. I live near Montpellier. You ever been there?”
I shake my head.
“I am taking the train home tomorrow. Mathilde is spending Christmas with her mother this year. You can spend Christmas with me.”
“Sounds good,” I say. “Thank you.”
We spend the day together and in the evening walk the Via del Corso to see the luminarie, the Christmas lights. We walk back over to San Pietro to see the tree at night and the nativity scene. Rob has lightened my life considerably. This morning I was ready to jump in the river and tonight I am holding hands with this good man who makes me laugh. He is gregarious and silly. His looks have changed since I knew him, but he is still the same kid inside. I love that, the antithesis of the dark, serious, painful shit I’ve been going through.
We take the train through some of the most beautiful countryside in the world, the Italian and French Rivieras. It is a long trip. We start early in the morning and get to Montpellier Sud at eight o’clock Christmas Eve. We get in his old Peugeot and head to the little village where he lives. It is a village of potters in the hills west of Montpellier called Saint Jean de Fos. He lives in an apartment on the square outside the church. It is the perfect sanctuary.
He has a Charlie Brown Christmas tree on his wood beam mantle and a red couch. He has a small bedroom with a big comfortable bed. A table and two chairs, a little kitchen. He is happy. He plays drums for a local band with some other guys his age. They do covers of old rock standards. He started playing drums after the divorce. Rob reminds me what life can be. Simple. Complete in oneself. Content.
But then he kisses me at midnight, making some joke about it not being New Year’s. And I kiss him back. The bells are ringing in the church outside. Then we go into his bedroom and shut the door. We will live in his little world together, spending most of the next week listening to yacht rock naked in bed after having sex for hours. It is one of the best Christmases I can remember. We walk up into the hills and pick branches and make arrangements all over the little apartment. Rob loves to cook and feeds me all kinds of delicious, fattening French food. Everything has butter, cream, and sometimes both.
He is a teacher and has these weeks off. I change my departure airport from Rome to Barcelona and spend each day with him. He likes to sleep in, sometimes until noon, and I am still getting up at daybreak. Sometimes I lie on a blanket on the floor in the kitchen, soaking up the winter sunshine slivering its way through the small window. Sometimes I walk around the village after I have my coffee. One day I walk alone up into the hills. Find a fucking Roman ruin. Romans ruin everything, I muse. But I have been good this week—no messaging. I haven’t sent or heard a word. Not even Buon Natale. I think about him all the time. I feel this tremendous heartache. But as I look out over the vineyards terraced down the hillside, some with a few gold leaves still clinging to the dormant vines, I recognize this place. I walk down the hill trying to understand time. A thread, a string. I try to visualize how it all works, how it is connected. I walk into the kitchen and look for something to help me. Then I see it—a ball of twine. The layers on top of each other spun neatly into a sphere.
Rob takes me to band practice later that day. I meet Hugo and Charles and Antoine. They are all middle age and making music for the fun of it. Antoine grows his own weed and offers me some of his joint. I haven’t smoked in a bit. It is good stuff and makes the music sound incredible. I meditate on the pattern of the floor tile, the woven effect the pattern creates. I think everyone comes into our lives for a reason, and therefore we go into everyone else’s life for a reason, weaving a grand design in time and space. I am grateful to Antoine. And Rob. And all the people I meet along the way. Even fucking Pietro, who has started this process of seeing beneath the surface.
Antoine is the lead guitarist and goes on a long solo for Wish You Were Here that has us all transported to another galaxy. Or maybe I am just high. But I am alive. I have all I need. And a ticket home.
On the last day, Rob drives me three hours south to Barcelona. I haven’t been to Spain in a while. My Spanish is rusty. We get a room in the Princess Hotel downtown and go to a bar across the street. There is flamenco tonight. I clap right along with the locals. In the morning, we watch the sunrise from the rooftop of the hotel.
I am grateful to Rob for showing up when he did. Now it is time to end this intermission and resume the performance.

From a cave east of Augusta, Sicily
In the third year of the rule of Emperor Caligula.

I will write my life and bury it here inside this mountain where my body too shall be buried. But I must write it, write my sorrow and passion, history and heartache.
I am not animal yet, without language, past or future. I am a woman. I am forty-six years old, but I feel ancient. Once I was a virgin, a young girl in Rome in the glorious days of our Emperor and my friend Caesar Augustus.
I loved those days of my life as a girl. I wandered the garden of my father Appius Gaius Claudius, admiral at Actium. I was daughter of his third wife, the third and last wife who left the world as I entered into it. Who had she been in that life and the lives before? His other two wives had also died, one of a plague that swept through the city, and the other as my brother was born. My father didn’t want me to die bringing life into the world. When Augustus called me to the Vestals, my father was delighted.
I spent thirty years guarding the sacred fire. When my time of service ended, I was given a marvelous villa overlooking the forum. From the terrace, I could see the fire of Rome burning.
I fell in love with a man named Alexius. We had a soul connection that bound us to one another. We wanted to marry. In order to do so, we had to receive permission from the Emperor Tiberius. We went to Capri where Tiberius lived to indulge his perversions.
I will not write what happened to me there. Even the words rape the mind.
Alexius allowed it to happen. In fact, he watched many times.
Alexius, the man, my man, the warrior, was completely emasculated by submission to authority. Tiberius threatened to have me killed instantly if Alexius intervened. And so he did not. He should have known I preferred death to debauchery. My honor was annihilated.
I cannot forgive this.
I eventually escaped.
I resolved, as I struggled in my stolen boat across the storm-churned sea, if ever I saw Alexius again, I would kill him.
I found this cave in the mountain. I watch the sun rise over the water. I can see Aetna fuming along with me. On clear days, I can see the coast of the mainland to which I will never return. I tend my garden of flowers and fruit trees. I raise bees and live off the fruit of my labor. I also harvest figs, fish, and the wild plants of this mountainside.
I do not know what happened to Alexius. I heard that Tiberius finally died, may he rot in hell for eternity.
I feel in my bones my time draws to a close. I am not sad. It will be good to be free from this life. I am weary of it.
I reflect on the good times, my days of innocence in the Atrium Vestae, my garden and friendships. Would that I had never left.
I found this parchment washed up on shore. I let it dry in the sun, made some ink and remembered I am a woman, not an animal. The goats roam the hillsides with me, searching for food. But I am not one of them.
I am Melisa of Rome, Keeper of Bees. I am strong. I have courage. And for the betrayal I endured, I am owed a debt of blood.
I write my life, each section begins with I—except the two which start with Alexius. But I write my life, my days and nights, like light writes on waves.

In Between—The Players

As our monad has a specific soul code, we are linked energetically to a soul family. Some of these are linked to us genetically, physically in incarnation. And some are linked by time, hooked through the fabric to intersect at different points along the journey. I, Yin, and am linked to you, Yang, one unit of soul existence with a corresponding unbreakable electromagnetic frequency. One thread of two fibers. But there are many threads that run across and parallel to us in this great weaving, the fabric of time and space, the material world. Each encounter we have at every single point along the journey is to help us learn and grow. It is part of the design of the fabric. As incarnated beings, we often do not understand this. But here in the In Between, we can see the connections woven into the pattern of life, the grand tapestry.
We celebrate together. Going through life is no easy feat. It is supposed to be challenging and difficult, a long hike through incredible terrain. Our soul family gathers. Language is different here, not the casual greetings of hey, how are you. It is more like aloha, an exchange of breaths, of essence. To be present. To share spirit. We greet each other in this way.
We see our grandparents. Souls we love enormously on earth. Limited by language, we use sense-derivative words like see, taste, touch, hear. But we are all energy here, not mass. And so our energetic prints can shift. When I see my grandmother, she looks like my grandmother. But when my grandfather sees her, she looks like his wife. There is a feast, but she hasn’t cooked it like she would have in life. Our energetic bodies still like to eat. On earth, we feast on light and don’t realize it. Plants consume light, animals consume plants. So we are in the In Between, eating light that tastes like carrots or apricots or ice cream. Depends what you’re in the mood for.
Why would our human experience be radically different than everything going on around us? Human hubris is the only thing unparalleled in the universe. From quantum particles to deep space, the structure of the universe is identical. All life from cells to cycles including decomposition and regeneration follows the same pattern. That is why a dandelion in seed is the shape of the universe and the human brain looks exactly like a galaxy.
We are getting ready for the concert. Ebullient and exuberant, we file into the concert hall. This is always a highlight.

Spain

I am by the fire, staring deep into the flames. Time whispers to me, and I know you’re near. I wake up, underwater, and rise to the surface. I feel you coming. And then I hear—the dogs growling, then barking.
You stumble into the firelight, covered in blood. Everyone is shouting and posing for defense, but I am still. I’ve been waiting these twenty years of my current life for this moment. I hear and see and feel nothing but your presence. My skin comes alive.
“Aidez-moi,” you cry out to the people surrounding you. We are poor and dirty, but not covered in blood. You, in your ripped brocade and satin, shoes missing, stockings shredded, stumble forward. The blood gushes down your face where you were struck, robbed of all but breeches and shirt. They would have taken those as well, but were prevented by some noise in the distance that scared them off before you were completely stripped. They had killed your man and stolen your carriage. And you were left to wander the Andalusian night in search of help.
We are outcasts, as always, my people. It’s better this way. Who wants to bend the knee to some tyrant? But no one here did this to you. Other bandits roaming these fields are now driving your carriage.
You collapse to your knees at the feet of our leader Enrico. Blood pours from your wounded head and Enrico’s mother cajoles him on your behalf. Let me help him, she says to her son. He nods, seeing no harm and possible gain.
She shoos him away and the old ladies take charge of you. I stay back and watch, unnoticed, unwanted. I’ve always been trouble, troubled, outside even the outcasts. I don’t mind. It’s better this way. Who wants to serve a man?
I tend my goat. She gives milk. I steal my own food and keep to myself most of the time. The women don’t like me and think I am trouble—because their men come after me, and sometimes I let them catch me. But I feel nothing for them and nothing lasts any time. I let go and go on. Who wants to serve a man?
But here you are.
I wake up underwater, standing by the fire. I can’t breathe, but I am not afraid. I know this water. I love this water. I emerge, and you’re there, at my feet, laid out by attendant old women who are cleaning away the blood covering you.
You are then stripped by these women who admire your form with unsuppressed glee. I, too, admire. I’ve seen men, many men. Your silken white skin that has never seen the sun, milk-fed, is unlike anything I’ve seen. Even our babies don’t have such soft and fair skin. Your whole body is covered in fine golden hair which is thicker on your jaw and chest and groin. In the fire light, I continue to watch as the women ease you into a clean tunic of loosely woven linen. Your legs are bare, only covered in that lovely light golden hair.
You rouse a little, and find my eyes. There is the crack of thunder overhead where there are no clouds.
Our eyes hold.
I found you, we say silently to each other.
Enrico questions you in the morning, and you explain who you are this time. A musician sent to the court to amuse our queen. But she wasn’t there, out on progress. So you decided to follow her into the wilderness with no respect for the warnings you were given, using your arrogance as your shield. But now you’re here and will be held for ransom.
Here, for a while.
Enrico sees my look. He’s my cousin, and although we have fucked, he loves me as a cousin. He knows I am lonely, my heart untouched. We discovered sex together, hardly more than children, but he has other women now. “A pet,” he smiles at me as he hands me your rope. I shall be your careful watchman then, until the ransom arrives.
Your wrists are bound in front and the rope winds around your arms and chest. Your head has been bandaged in strips of unbleached cloth. There’s still blood in your golden beard. Your eyes are deep blue, the top of the sky at dusk. I lead you on the hemp rope to a cave I know where I can keep my eyes on you. You stumble a little as you walk, hungry and thirsty for the first time in your life. You were born into a noble family, a third son, and your mother was indulgent, letting you play instead of study and your play became music.
We begin to learn each other as we are now. First, language. I have never heard French before, but you were required to learn some Spanish for your journey. My language is not the language of the court, but we begin to speak to each other, word by word.
Your name is Louis.
I bring you bread and put oil on your wound. On the third night, I sit behind you with your head in my lap, my eyes wandering over your bound body between my legs. Touching your forehead at the hairline, the two inch gash scabbed over, my fingers move into your hair. I have never seen hair this color on a man. Once, on a woman in Sevilla. It is dark gold like flame and fine like spiderweb. I can’t stop touching it. I see your face relax, the pain and stress easing from it.
You turn and your eyes meet mine.
You are dark yet full of fire. Through my pain and confusion I see you. Long limbs strangely delicate for such a setting, perhaps hunger has kept you lean. I see you watching as the women fuss over me, strip me. I am barely conscious, but I see you. I wake up in water and float to the surface. I know this water. I love this water. I sink back into it as the pain grips me.
I am interrogated in the morning and given to you as captive. I must wait to be ransomed. I think about the situation and submit to my circumstances. If I were well enough to overpower you and attempt escape, I would most likely be caught and end up in a much worse prison. I could be assigned a less sympathetic, and certainly less alluring, guard. Plus, it is you. I know it is you.
Your name is Maelíosa.
I shall be your willing captive then, until the ransom arrives. Now you stroke my hair, and again I have the sensation of floating underwater. My wrists are bound in front of me on my abdomen. The tunic covers my torso and hips but my legs are bare. I relax against you, my thighs spread a little apart. I feel the air against my cock resting under the cloth of the tunic. I shift a little, thighs wider, enjoying the cool air against my skin.
Your eyes seem unusually large and black in this dim light, enormous black orbs in your small face. Your lips, too, seem almost too large for your face. You are eyes and lips and long dark hair cascading over the tops of your breasts and your bodice, the ends brushing my face as my head rests in your lap.
You’ve fed me bread. You reach for the wineskin and help me drink. I feel some strength returning, some flow of blood.
Your fingers resume stroking my hair then wander into my beard I had grown recently to fit the Spanish fashion. I feel a finger brush my lip and I part my mouth. You slide the side of your index finger against my teeth. I open them and close them lightly around your finger, capturing it. I look into your wide black eyes.
My skin is alive. My heart pumps wildly. The blood flows through my veins as you lie there. Your teeth have captured my finger. I look at your parted thighs, the golden hair against the smooth skin. My pet, my plaything, my captive.
I lean down and kiss your forehead, between your eyes, near your wound. Your eyes close, and you relax against me. Some memory stirs, a memory that is not mine but belongs to us.
We recline in the mountain cave on a woven straw mat. I have a blanket, some bread, the wine, and a small fire burning. And you, bound before me.
My prisoner.
I shift and feel the wetness between my legs, smell it. I see you smell it too. You let go of my finger and turn towards it, nose against the fabric of my dress.
You look up at me, those dark sky eyes, and I spread my thighs. You press your nose against me and inhale. Breathing my scent as you angle your body, your wrists and arms and chest still bound with the thick rope, I can see your cock straining, hard against the light fabric. You lift your head and start talking to me in a mix of language I try to understand.
“You are beautiful and smell like the best perfume…”
I lift the hem of my dress.
You turn onto your knees as I lean back on my hands, watching your golden head as your lips and tongue find their target. The rope is tight around your chest and arms and it is hard for you to balance. Your tongue is soft against my skin and I love the way you drink me in as if you are indeed thirsty. I move and push you onto your back. The pleasure you’ve built in me needs release. I remove my dress.
You straddle my face and I can see your breasts outlined by the fire light. I feel you grind against my mouth and beard. My chest is tight against the restrictive ropes, my arms strain against them. But there’s nothing I can do, bound as I am. I can only open my mouth and drink you in with my tongue. I sink into the water, your prisoner, and taste your fluid dripping into my mouth. My cock strains upward, in the open air as it pushes past the tunic. I feel you reach back to grab it.
Your hand squeezes it roughy. I have only fucked chambermaids and countesses, was hoping to perhaps fuck a queen, but this is my first time with a wild gypsy. In this bound state, I have no choice but to submit to you. The rope is biting into my skin and your grinding on my face hurts, your rough groping of my cock hurts, but I feel only pleasure and this submergence back into the water where you and I are one.
Your cock is hard in my hand and I need it inside me now. I scrape my pussy over the rough ropes binding you and impale myself on your cock. I throw my head back and let out a cry—it has been so long since I fucked you and yet time is slippery.
It slips forward and backward as I do against your cock, from one moment to the next, from one present moment to the past moment, back to our nights in other days, other bodies, sweating and slippery, frenzied, ravenous for the other.
I don’t untie you but I rip apart the tunic with my hands so I can see your chest. I lick my juices from your beard and mouth, our tongues melding as your cock thrusts into me.
My cunt fights against you, the counter blow, thrust and parry, pushing and grinding down until your balls are wedged against my ass. These are the physical properties of this coupling, but inwardly we have transcended language and the physical, a pure metamorphosis from stardust to fusion, our inward energy beings united in spirit in the astral plane.
I have never felt so alive, complete, on fire and at peace at the same time. As if I am doing the exact thing I was created to do.
Your orgasms descend against my cock one after the other. I am ready to explode inside you, head into the realm where no thought, no language but only pleasure and peace exist.

Time continues spinning. We are given days and nights, a month or so. And then, news.
Your ransom has been paid.
Enrico comes to me and informs me that tomorrow you will be taken to Sevilla.
I go silent. Enrico looks at me curiously, expecting a more violent reaction from me. I say nothing, staring at the horizon. The sun has set and the world is an ocean of blue air surrounding us. Enrico heads back to the main camp and I enter the cave. You are sleeping.
I watch you sleep. The water we exist in is roaring now, a tormenta churning up waves that crash over me. You are restless in your sleep, brow furrowed, frowning. “Meli,” you cry out, waking yourself up.
You are the first thing I see when I am dropped back into this life. I had been dreaming of I know not what. You look angry. Beautiful, and angry. I sit up, still bound at the ankle to a stake in the ground. “What is it?” I ask.
“They want you back. Tomorrow.”
I am filled with relief. For weeks I had been wondering if word was out that I was even missing.
“You’re happy?” you ask me.
I can see you are not happy, but my own joy supersedes any consideration. “Yes.”
“You would leave me then?”
“I must, Maelíosa. You knew it would happen eventually. I cannot stay here.”
I am silent. I have no words inside, in any language. Only the storm. Memories that don’t belong to this life start to unfold within me. Memories of pain, humiliation, and hatred. The vow to kill. I feel something rise in me like a tidal wave, powerful and uncontrollable.
“You came here covered in blood and that is how you shall leave.” I grab my dagger.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Maelíosa. You knew we would have to part one day,” I say with more bravado than I feel. You have a wild look, something I’ve seen glimpses of when we are together. But now the mask has fully slipped and your violent nature is unsheathed like the blade you hold. “What would you have me do?” I ask. “Stay with you forever? Here in this cave?”
I throw down the knife. I had no heart until you arrived and now I don’t know how to bear losing it. “Yes,” I say as I go into your arms. I cling to you like a child and you hold me tightly. I remember the waves, lying flat on the bottom of the boat as the waves tossed it around, water pouring in over the edges, unafraid to live or die, my only desire to escape the nightmare I had inhabited with you as witness. I remember you falling, the look on your face as time suspended you between bridge and river. Scrambling down the rocky hillside, wading in cold rushing water, finding you there, neck broken. I shall not forgive your cowardice. I shall not forgive your obstinance. We hold each other in this time, this life, feeling all the loss and fear and panic. Brokenness. How to be whole in a world made to tear us apart? But here we are now, in one physical moment.
You kiss my chest and I must enter you, enter in to the origin. Yes, we can be whole for a moment in this time. I feel your heart beneath my lips, beating. I feel your heat envelop me, draw me inside to a completion. We hold still, as still as living things can be, breath and heartbeat the only rhythms. We feel this union of two halves. I curl my fingers in your long black hair and pull your head back. My lips go to your neck and then I push your head toward me, my mouth against yours so we are joined in two places. That should be enough, that should be enough for permanence. And yet permanence cannot exist in a transitory experience. Time and space drawing their spirals all around us, the waves of energy always flowing the same as that cold river, the same as the wind that spun up the the sea.
You push me flat onto the earth and hover above me like the sky separating from the land, like Uranus and Gaia making love, making life. I see your eyes and know you love me. I know we are one. I feel your legs between mine and your fingers entwine with mine next to my head. I can never let you go. We shall not be parted.
You are on top of me, head back, breasts free like an Amazonian warrior riding full gallop. The ends of your long hair trail over my testicles, teasing them. I grab hold of your silky strong thighs and pull you even closer, plunging deeper into you. And in that moment, I reach for that which I have discarded and plunge it into you, purging my own heart with your blood. You will not leave me. I will not be forsaken.

The Parting

Why did I do it? Sitting in the airport in Barcelona, I message. Buona Befana, Pietro. All my hard work of recovery down the tubes. The irony is not lost on me. Befana is one of my favorite holidays in Italy. An old witch rides through the sky and sweeps out all the cobwebs of the last year. Pietro was the blackest spider of them all. I shouldn’t have done it. I should have deleted Telegram and been on my merry way. But I didn’t.
Grazie, anche a te, Melissa comes the reply three minutes later. As if he’s been waiting. We hardly ever use each other’s names, preferring instead our insulting nicknames cow and asino.
And we are off again. Buongiorno, buonanotte.
I return to California and make profiles on the dating apps. I cannot believe how many there are. Tinder, Hinge, Grindr, Bumble, Raya, Match, eHarmony, OkCupid, Elite Singles, Her, Coffee Meets Bagel, Snack, Plenty of Fish. There are more. I pick three and make three different profiles. One serious, one sexy and flirty, and one only for women. I start dating.
And chatting. So many people.
Still every day, buongiorno, buonanotte, and something in between. Waiting for my little ping with the blue caption and the picture of the man I love looking beautiful.
My phone, like most people’s, gets a lot of messages a day. But mine gets only one in blue. His.
Ah well, I persevere. I go out on dates, fool around, have sex with a few. I try to forget him. I tell myself I won’t message. I make it a day, maybe a day and a half. Then I start feeling this warm buzzing inside me, honey from the bees, sweet and golden, and I fucking break. Buongiorno, buonanotte.
Our theater season continues to be a smash. I go to New Orleans and Stefan from Mississippi meets me there. This time we do have sex. He knows what he is doing and I enjoy it. But I can’t come without picturing Pietro.
I start taking Wellbutrin but it makes me nauseous. I stop taking it.
I do my workouts with more focus, trying to escape my mind. I make myself concentrate on my breathing in each class. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Meanwhile, this program is running code underneath it all, a constant connection to his energetic sequence. The lightning bolt. Electricity. We are a singular circuit. No matter the distance, there is the AC/DC energy exchange always happening.
I go out on good dates and bad dates and plenty of in between. I meet nice people and rotten people and plenty of in between. I have good, bad, and indifferent sexual encounters. And not one of these people makes an impact on me like Pietro. I wonder if he experiences the same thing. What if he is thinking of me as much as I think of him? Poor guy. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. He probably chalks it up to my messaging. I message him so often, how can he forget me? But I don’t think that’s true. I think even if I didn’t message, we would still think about each other.
I consider resigning from the theater, selling my house, and moving to Italy. I had wanted to move to Italy before I met Pietro. I call a Realtor and we go over the repairs I would need to make before listing in order to get top dollar. There aren’t many. A new dishwasher. Fix the leak in the upstairs bathroom sink. Plant a few more things in the garden where it has gotten bare. I need to do those things anyway.
But before I sign the paperwork to list it, I decide to take one more trip to Rome. Pietro and I have been plenty flirty over the last three months. We have FaceTimed every other week. Things seem to be going reasonably well. No more talk of other women and different paths. I am in the best shape of my life from all my working out and eating healthy. My career is at a high point, and we all know one should end at a high point. I should have more than enough money to live on the rest of my life. My youth is gone but I look pretty damn good for fifty. Almost fifty-one.
I board the plane for Rome. I don’t like flying long distances. After six hours, I get squirrelly. This is one of the major reasons I started taking such long trips to Europe. I am not interested in going for a week. Too hard. But I try to enjoy being up in the air. From my window seat, I love watching the sunset and stars and sunrise. I get excited when we reach the edge of Europe and I can track us flying over Ireland, England, France, the Alps. And then we are in Italian airspace. I see Corsica and Elba and Sardinia off the coast. Beautiful green Tuscany and Umbria. Lazio. Almost there. The plane descends and I see the faithful Aleppo pines have been holding the terrain down until I return. And here I am.
I have arranged for my driver Flavio to pick me up. I have been using him the last few trips. It is lovely to be greeted by a friendly face and have help with my suitcase. We walk across the street, into the parking garage, and get into his black Mercedes. I am home safe.
I picture living in Rome on the ride in from the airport. I try not to picture myself living in Pietro’s villa, but the fantasy tries to creep in. I try to keep my imagination in an apartment along the Tiber with a terrace and view of the river. I know that is asking a lot, but I should be able to afford it. It’s funny to think that thirty years as a reasonably successful actress netted me barely enough to make bills, but purchasing one house in foreclosure has made me rich. I thank my past self for the decision. I remember being hesitant to sign those papers and my mom and dad encouraging me. Helping me with the down payment. It was fifty-thousand dollars. I got the house for two-fifty back then. I used a mortgage accelerator and paid it off in seven years.
I am tired from the overnight flight and my mind is wandering all over the place. I feel relief when we get to the corner of Banco di Santo Spirito and Lungotevere. I know I can crawl into bed in the next few minutes and rest.
I check in with Emma who knows I am arriving early. She has a room ready. I strip off my travel clothes and climb into bed naked. I fall asleep.
But I don’t rest. I dream I am falling. Falling, falling. My arms are reaching back and I am screaming. I hear someone calling me from above, a man’s voice. I hit the cold water and am dragged under by the current. And then I dream it again, over and over, for the next three hours. Finally, I come back into this consciousness, cold in my core, deeply disturbed.
Shaking off the dream, I get out of bed and open the window. This is Rome. Now. My ancient lady and the bees are happy. I am supposed to meet Pietro at eight o’clock for dinner. It is now one in the afternoon. I should shower but the thought of being in water after that strange dream is unappealing. I will take myself out for a little lunch and then get ready.
I would like to go somewhere I have never been. I get on a bus and ride it and we stop by the Porta Maggiore. I haven’t been here. I get off the bus and walk around. This was the edge of the ancient city. I walk along the walls for a while and turn right. I end up back at the forum by the Colosseum. No matter how many times I see it, I still take a picture. The light is always a little different. I walk along the edge of the forum avoiding tourists. They are here en masse. But I find a little side road that goes nowhere really, but it is close to the sacred fire. Just over the wall on the backside of the church. My ancient lady is happy. I like to make her happy.
Then I walk to a vegetarian restaurant on Via Margutta. They have a buffet style lunch with good food. I like this part of Rome. After lunch, I find myself in the Villa Borghese after walking through the Piazza del Popolo and along the grass a few minutes. I have been to the museum here, a long time ago. Prosperina is still in Pluto’s clutches, I presume. I haven’t gone to any art museums or tourist attractions in a while. But I like wandering the park. I see a rentable electric bike and hop on. I ride down the hill and back across town to my neighborhood.
Time to get ready. I have brought with me a little black dress and wedge sandals and good underwear. I shower, sweaty enough now to forget the dream, do my hair and makeup. Putting on clothes and my new perfume, this one by Guerlain, I try not to think about Christmas. We are past Easter. It is almost my birthday. May will be here in less than a week. May is the best time in Italy. Maybe everywhere, but definitely Italy.
I walk to the restaurant we had decided on. We are having sushi. The restaurant is called Okasan and only a few minutes away. I don’t love walking the sampietrini in heels of course. I am soft enough to consider calling a cab. But I persevere. This is what I do these days—just keep going.
I am so excited I feel I am coming out of my skin. I think we are about to get back on track after nine months of nonsense. I love him more than ever. I can’t believe I met him, the love of my life. It seems impossible to believe. But I know he is the one, The One, like people are always talking about. For fifty years, I didn’t really believe in this kind of stuff. I know most of the plays are about it. Music, television, movies, books. But I had been happy working in the theater and living my very full life in San Francisco, with or without a partner. I spent the last four months dating forty different people and I didn’t like any of them much.
Pietro is different. And he must feel the same or we wouldn’t be having dinner tonight. After messaging almost every day for months.
He isn’t there when I arrive. I sit down and fiddle with the tablet menu, putting in orders for sashimi and sushi misti. I stumble around in Italian trying to talk to the waitress. He messages me he cannot find parking and then goes silent. A few minutes go by. Is he coming?
The waitress comes back to my table. She moves a little. And then he is there. Standing to my left, hovering over me. I look up at his beautiful face, a bit awestruck. This is real, it is happening—after months of waiting. I stand up and go for his right cheek, but just get one peck not the standard two. He doesn’t do anything with me the way he does with others and everybody else does with me. Including be amiable.
I see the same look on this Japanese waitress’s face as I did on the first one who served us drinks last summer. Very strange. Are we such an odd couple?
Perhaps.
The beautiful dishes of sushi come out and he complains. He is on a strict diet now, doctors orders. No more alcohol, raw fish, most meats.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. This is the first I’ve heard of it.
Pietro grunts and shakes his head. He won’t tell me.
He finds something suitable on the menu and pushes the button to order. I have a mountain of sushi to get through. On most dates, I try to eat like a delicate butterfly. But fuck it, this is sushi. I will eat all of it.
“I thought you liked sushi?” I ask.
“I do. This just happened today.”
“Oh.”
“How’ve you been?”
“You know. Good.”
“Good.”
He seems uncomfortable and irritable. Maybe from the doctor’s visit? His cooked fish and side dishes are delivered and I dig into my sashimi. I am a pro at this. Wasabi, shoyu, ginger. Love it. I am quite methodical and thorough. I realize I don’t know what to talk about. I say everything in the chat every day. I haven’t told him about possibly putting my house on the market. I start there.
“Why would you want to do that?” he grumbles.
“I am thinking of moving out of California.”
“Where?”
He stops, chopsticks mid-air, and looks at me intently.
I know what not to say.
“I am not sure yet,” I manage.
He grunts again and finishes taking his bite. I wonder if he is trying to be purposefully unpleasant so I will quit liking him, but it isn’t working. He looks fucking gorgeous sitting across from me with his scowl and his seaweed salad. I want to bottle this moment. Keep it forever. He starts talking about movies I haven’t seen. Politics I don’t know. Philosophers and historians and musicians I’ve never heard of. New theories about physics. To his disdain, I am not familiar with any of these subjects. We really don’t have much in common.
But I don’t care. Does he?
He does seem to be getting more and more contentious as we go through our meal. Finally, the check comes and I offer to pay it. He lets me.
We head outside. I’m not sure what is next but it will involve his car. But he can’t remember where he parked it. I try not to laugh because he is pissed. Still cute though. “I was in such a hurry. Where the fuck is it?”
“Do you remember any shops it was near?”
“No,” he growls. “C’mon.” He takes my arm and we start walking around the block. The evening air is perfect. I am in Rome with Pietro. Yes, he’s lost his car but I am sure we will find it eventually. I want to talk about something I do know about, or at least wonder about.
“So you do believe in past lives?”
He grunts again.
“I have talked to you about feeling connected to you many times. But do you think it is from a past life or something? I keep having these memories pop up and today I had such a weird dream. And, of course, I told you about my ancient lady.”
“Here it is,” he says and unlocks the car with his fob.
No gentleman today. I am getting my own door. “Well, do you?” I ask over the roof of his car.
“Get in.”
I shrug and sit down in the car. I wonder where we are going but I really don’t care. I am near him. My heart is so happy.
“A friend of mine is playing tonight. Do you want to go?”
“Playing music?”
“No, marbles. Of course, music.”
He is certainly surly this evening. I think it only makes him hotter and me turn into a little girl around him. “You’re like a bear,” I mumble without thinking.
“A bear?”
“Mm-hmm,” I reach over and stroke his beard. “Fuzzy. Minding your own business. Don’t like to be provoked.”
His lips twitch a little at that and he leans his cheek into my palm for a few seconds. Then he turns his head to back out of the parking space. And we are off.
Driving the streets of Rome at night with Pietro is one of the highlights of my life. You know those moments, those unforgettable moments that etch your memory with light, like a photograph—this is one of those. I know that if it is true your life flashes before your eyes on your way out, this scene will be in the montage. The streetlights shimmer against the pavement, the traffic lights in red and green add Christmas-like merriment, the buzzing scooters and motorcycles passing like hornets, driving past baroque and ancient buildings—all of it a blur as my focus is on the profile of the man next to me. I would like to make intelligent conversation, but words in any language are absent from my head. I simply feel. We are together.
He finds a place to park and takes me into a cabaret. There is dim lighting from the little shaded electric lamps on the cloth-covered tables, red velvet upholstery on the chairs, a stage with blue lights turned low at the back of the place. We are shown to a table in the middle of the room. He orders champagne and I see why. This place has fabulous coupes with long tall stems and square bottoms. I feel very elegant.
We toast, and then he stops. “Fuck, I forgot. No drinking.” He sets his glass on the table without tasting it. He looks incredibly dour.
The band comes on, jazz. He points out his friend who plays upright bass. Pietro tells me they went to school together and have been friends since they were twelve. We listen to the first set which ends around eleven-thirty. “Ready?” Pietro asks me.
I am floating on champagne bubbles, oxytocin, and exhaustion. “Sure,” I say. His friend comes over and Pietro introduces me to Gianni. Pietro says he sounded good and then makes our excuses that we aren’t staying for the second set.
“Glad you came,” Gianni says. He looks over at me, nods at Pietro, and heads backstage. I wonder how many women Gianni has seen Pietro go through, hundreds maybe in their nearly thirty year friendship. I move my mind away from that thought and return to enjoying this moment.
“Va bene,” Pietro says, ushering me through the front door. The air has turned cool. “Home?”
It is his bedtime, I know, and long past mine. My body craves sleep, but I ignore her. I hope he is taking me to his house. Instead, he heads to my place. I try not to be too disappointed. It is the first night of a long stay.
He pulls into a spot along the river. My street is pedestrian only. I unbuckle my seatbelt and put my hand on the door. But it is worth a try. “Want to walk me up?” I ask.
I can tell he doesn’t, but he starts to unbuckle. “You don’t have to,” I backpedal.
“Listen, Melissa, we shouldn’t. It is too hard for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean last time. You got so attached,” he says.
“I am in love with you. You know that,” I respond. He’s heard it many times in the chat. He never says it back.
“I told you it’s impossible.”
“Why? I am right here. It is possible.”
“I am not your knight in shining armor or whatever fantasy you’ve concocted in your head. I like being single. I don’t want a relationship.”
“Okay. That’s fine.” But we already have one, I think. It isn’t a fairy tale or fantasy. This is our relationship. “We don’t need to have a traditional relationship. It can be whatever we want it to be.”
He is silent, looking through the windshield at nothing.
I continue, “But we are connected, we are already connected. And that is all a relationship is, the connection between things. Or people.”
“It’s easier when you’re stupid,” he laughs.
“What?”
“When you don’t know what the fuck I am talking about. But then you say things sometimes that are beyond knowledge of the world. True things.”
He is looking at me now, his dark eyes boring into mine. He leans over and I nearly lunge at him. I have wanted to kiss him all night.
Our lips meet and it is like the first time, the first night, the perfect kiss. I can tell he feels it too, the unbelievable improbability of this kiss.
My hands go to his chest. I have dreamed of feeling his heartbeat against my palms every moment for months. And there it is, beating. The rhythm of time, of the Universe. His finger brushes against my neck in the exact spot he bit me when I left him. My pulse throbs there. We continue kissing, dissolved into the kiss. My hands slide up from his chest into his hair at the base of his head. I wish we could teleport into my bedroom without having to reenter the world to get there. Getting out of the car, crossing the street, opening the locks on the doors, mounting the stairs—all these obstacles to get from here to there. By then, the spell may be broken. So I accept the confines of the car as our fortress against such mundanity and stay inside the kiss.
I climb onto his lap. His hand goes to my breast as if against his better judgment. I feel his hardness against my leg. I want more. More. I want more. I always want more. The theme of my life, more, never satisfied. Never satisfied for long. Appetites and desires, ambitions and objectives in a constant stream of want. This is my downfall.
I reach down between us to rub his hard cock through his pants. He pushes me off him, gently but firmly. “It’s late,” he says. “We’re tired.”
I am dazed, a little drunk on champagne, and disappointed. “Okay,” I say. “I’ll go.”
He gets out of the car this time, walks around to open my door. I discern it not an act of chivalry but insurance. He wants me gone. He walks me across the street and waits as I get the outer door open with my key. He is standing there looking like God to me, omnipotent and glorious. Perhaps this too is my downfall. I have made an idol of him.
Pietro bends his head and gives me a gentle kiss. “Buonanotte,” he says softly. Something in his eyes disturbs me. But I tell myself not to worry.
“Buonanotte,” I whisper back.
We message the next day and I ask if we can go out again, but he tells me he has a last minute assignment in Milan. He will be back Thursday. That is my birthday, but I don’t tell him this. “Okay, see you Thursday at Prati Rione Gastronomico.”
“We’ll see,” he replies.
I spend the two days catching up with old acquaintances. I could live here, I think. I already have a small network of friends. At Otherwise Books, an English bookstore, I find they have a feminist book club. There is a likely yoga studio I pass on Corso Vittorio. I make friends with a lady who runs a flower shop on Via di Panico.
One of my friends is originally from Prague. Marguerite invites me to dinner Wednesday night and we discuss Italian men as well as her work on climate change with the UN. Her favorite question she ever heard on one of her dates was what is her favorite kind of pasta. She looks at me, the satirical disbelief on her intelligent face comic. We laugh over our wine and pasta. “It is ubiquitous,” she says, taking a healthy bite. I tell her a little about Pietro. I confess I am thinking of moving here. She shakes her head.
“I don’t know, Melissa. It gets to be the same after a while.” She has been here five years. “You can’t eat pasta every fucking day of your life.”
“They do,” I counter.
“Yes, but we are not Italian. And no matter how we try, we never will be. We want to taste more of life. Sushi, you said you like. I like caviar and blini.”
I muse on her words. Marguerite is one of the most brilliantly intellectual women I have ever met and I respect her. But I am in love. I think love is even more deaf than blind.
Thursday morning is one for the ages, simply stunning. Clear, cool air with sunshine streaming in the brilliant blue sky. I have coffee at my usual place and stroll up Coronari looking in shop windows before my mani/pedi appointment. Sitting in the chair with my feet soaking in warm water, I message buongiorno. A te, comes the reply. Afterward, I swing by Stefania’s flower shop. She has pale pink English roses in, the first of the season. I buy half a dozen and take them to my hair appointment with Paolo at BH Salon. He is as much philosopher and therapist as hairdresser. I met him a couple of years ago and love him. We catch up and I also tell him about Pietro. Shaking his head, he cautions me. “Sometimes, when people share too much, get too close, they withdraw. It seems opposite of what should happen—we should get even closer. But it is what people do. They are scared to share too much.” I dismiss the warning and admire my hair. “You are a genius, Paolo,” I say. He does give a fabulous haircut.
My friend Diana takes me to lunch and gives me a present she has wrapped in a small package. It is a vase she made in her pottery class. “Diana, it’s too much!” I exclaim. A delicate eggshell blue with a crystal-like design from the original glaze her teacher invented, the vase is about four inches tall and turned in a perfect miniature amphora. “This is beautiful!”
Diana waves her hand as if it were inconsequential. But I have taken a pottery class and all of my pieces remained lumps. I really am touched. I give her three of my roses in parting. We kiss cheeks. “Good luck with Pietro tonight,” she wishes me. Of course, I had told her about him too.
Back in the hotel room, I put the roses in the vase and marvel at the Universe’s constant provision. I look amazing already with this hair and my nails polished. I put on the dress I had left hanging. It is a deep green with anthuriums printed on it. I put on my sandals and peacock bracelet I bought in a boutique in New Orleans. I take a cab to Piazza Mazzini. Like the day we met.
I have forgotten to let Cristina know I am here, I realize as I settle at the table in the restaurant. It is seven o’clock. He should be here soon, I think. He doesn’t know it is my birthday. I haven’t mentioned it. He could have googled me and found out months ago, but as far as I know, he does not know. I have googled his birthday. It is February 17. I don’t know if astrologically we are a good match. I don’t want to know. I want to believe we are. I believe we are. For once, I am not really contemplating anything deeply as I sit drinking my glass of Prosecco, simply letting random thoughts drift by.
I guess I will order another one. He still isn’t here. I look at my phone. Nothing from him. It is almost eight o’clock. The tables are filling with dinner patrons. I don’t have a reservation. I should have made one, I realize. “Where are you?” I message.
“Home,” he replies.
“Are you coming?”
“Not tonight.”
I try calling him. He declines my call.
I am furious. I pay the check and head into the piazza. The temperature has dropped suddenly. A cold wind has picked up. A storm is coming.
I message again. “Why not?”
“It is not possible.”
What in the fuck?
I rant. “What do you mean it is not possible? Everything is possible. We determine our lives…” I launch into a diatribe on the chat. No reply.
I am shivering on a park bench as the lightning cracks overhead. I need to get out of here. I start walking to my hotel.
I try calling one more time. He doesn’t answer the phone, but messages one word—Stop.
The storm breaks all around me. It is pouring. My hair is plastered to my head. My sodden dress is clinging to my legs, my sandals are soaked, my feet are freezing. I had been trying to hurry but at this point I give up. I am already wet. I don’t want to slip and fall too.
I stop in the middle of the empty bridge and look around. Lightning over the Giardino degli Aranci. Over the castle. Over the courthouse. I wonder if I will be struck by lighting standing here on the Ponte Sant’Angelo on my birthday. I certainly wouldn’t mind going out that way. I wait.
Nothing happens.
I am just getting wetter, if that is possible. Heaving a sigh filled with regret and resignation, I finish crossing the bridge and cross the street. I go back to my empty hotel room and peel off my clothes and shoes. My ruined bracelet. My ruined life. Roman ruins. Fuck all of it.
Despite myself, my education, beliefs, values, morals, ethics, identity, principles, and personality, I pick up my phone to wish him buonanotte.
Only one checkmark. I see his picture is gone, replaced by his initials. I look under his name at the top of the screen. The tag usually says last seen recently. What I see now brings utter devastation like an atomic blast.
last seen a long time ago…

In Between—The Concert

We take our places. The theater goes completely dark and there is silence.
And then, one note, resonating. The whole orchestra sounds this one note, and light is created. We can see. And the music of the Universe fills the hall. We are here to witness the beginning.
This is the creation of all physical structure in all dimensions starting with the energy field. We all hum within ourselves as the waves start radiating, the motion of the waves turning and gliding and soaring and falling. The waves themselves are multidimensional, not flat two-dimensional lines. They exist in all directions at once. And the weaving begins, one wave entering another looking like smoke as much as anything. We are now between particles, the orchestra building with each note the units of gravity and mass from quantum and quark and electron to photon, neutron, and the power-filled proton. We see atom created. And then like stars, the sky above us fills with atoms. We gasp and applaud.
All the elements are brought into being with glorious music. Molecules and minerals compose galaxies which turn in time to the rhythm. We watch the birth of a star. Red giants and supernova. Antimatter is the rest between notes. The only way to experience what is there is to have the negative space of what is not there. Duality in all things yet a constant whole. The formation of a planet. Then we are shown all the planets all over the universe, and finally, as Act One ends, we see a little blue planet at one end of a galaxy far from the center of the universe. This planet is Earth. And she is the focus of the next act.
The auditorium goes dark again, but there is no intermission. We all breathe in and breathe out, collective breath, one.
This breath hovers over the waters of the little blue planet as the light comes on again. We watch the waters separate, the land rise then split apart. It is so exquisitely beautiful to see the mountains take shape as the plates shift against each other, the lava spew from the volcanoes, the ice forming fractals into glaciers which sweep across the land. Light hits a piece of ice and is splintered into myriad colors which temporarily blind us.
And next, in the blink of an eye, the earth is covered in life. Trees, vines, flowers, grasses, moss, fungi. The profound intricacy of the interconnectedness of the plants amazes us. Then we are shown the microscopic world, the structure of cells. Viruses and bacteria and tardigrades and diatoms and protozoa and plankton. How can this be? But the focus goes outward and we see the primeval world of jungle and forest, the creatures inhabiting it rivaling the microbes in their monstrosity.
The music stops. “Just kidding,” a voice says. And then chaos. The music resumes, a frenzied crescendo, as multicellular life is destroyed through fire, ice, and flood. And at last, the music moves into a calm, peaceful ode. We see the earth covered once more with green things growing. We are focused on a glade, the sunlight glistening against the long blades of grass. A gentle wind is blowing. Birdsong fills the air. We sense something is about to happen, a birth, a genesis. The production ends with the same note that opened the symphony resounding at its finale.
Our enthusiastic cheers and applause fill the concert hall. What a show.

War

He sold his guitar.
As he walked away from the buyer, he regretted it immediately. He wanted to run back, shove the wad of bills back in the guy’s hand, grab his guitar, and head to the hills. But he didn’t. He kept forcing one foot in front of the other. He climbed the steps of the bus and moved to the back. He sat down and closed his eyes. Before too long, the bus started moving and he was being transported miles away from home and music and his mama and all he had ever known.
John Louis Williams was a man, a soldier, his country at war. This was what he was supposed to be doing. His duty.
That 61 Highway carried him and the other boys in from the cotton fields and juke joints of the Delta south out of town. They were heading to Biloxi. He was nineteen years old, black, strong, handsome, and newly inducted into the United States Army.
In the year 1943.
His guitar was a ten year old National Duolian resonator he had bought in Clarksdale when he was fourteen. He loved that guitar and the guitar loved him back, singing strings. She was his prize. The reason he woke up every day. To pick up his box and slide and feel. But a soldier didn’t need to feel. Music or anything else. He was a machine now, a tool to be used in the fight for freedom. Funny how you had to give up freedom to fight for it…
Poor Johnny looked out the window at the hills distant to his left. How long could he have hid out in the Mississippi hill country? The whole war? No one knew how long it would last. And he wasn’t a coward. He wasn’t. He was afraid, but he wasn’t a coward. So he sat next to the window and watched home disappear.
He had never seen the ocean. He had never seen anything outside Coahoma County. He wondered if he would ever see Coahoma County again. Something inside said no.
So he’d sold his guitar, given his mama the money as he boarded the bus, kissed her tear-wet cheek goodbye, and was on his way to the training ground.
One year later, he found himself on the ground in Italy, covered in blood and debris. Johnny didn’t remember exactly what had happened. The last thing he remembered was preparing to drop on Terni when his plane had been struck by anti-aircraft fire. The crash killed the rest of the crew. He should have died that day. So the soldier did. The man was reborn.
He didn’t have his guitar anymore, but this time he was heading to the hills. He had done enough. The war would be won and lost without him. He climbed. Up. Up. To the sky. The hills above the valley seemed deserted. He saw a few wild pigs, a fox, a starving stray dog. He kept climbing.
Finally way up above a place called Santa Restituta he reached the sky. There was nowhere left to go.
So he wandered along the ridge of the mountain singing Trouble in Mind and wondering what he would find to eat up here. He didn’t care if he starved. He wasn’t going back.
Desertion. What a word. To undo the fastening, the lining up. The guilt that came with it was heavy, but not as heavy as the weight of the atrocities he had committed and witnessed. Would he ever recover? Be himself again? Trouble in mind, I’m blue. But I won’t be blue always. His fingers remembered the music as he walked along. He remembered the feel of the glass on his finger, bringing the strings to life, to sing.
He missed the weight of cotton, the heat of the August sun, the Delta mud, the Man. That’s how bad it was. Things he hated were at least familiar and almost endurable. Now he was on a mountain in a foreign country, hungry, thirsty, tired, alone, outlaw, murderer, and criminal. Nowhere to go, no one to trust.
Then he smelled bacon frying.
He thought maybe he was imagining it. Bacon.
Despite his mind’s misgivings, his body carried him toward the smell. It was hungry. He hadn’t had a real meal in five days. He breathed in the aroma with each step. His mind would have to work once he got close. He couldn’t just walk up to who was cooking and ask for a plate. This wasn’t Mama’s porch. These were the hills of Umbria above Terni.
Would he kill to eat?
He was done killing.
There must be another way. He refused to kill another soul in this life. He had done enough. Enough. Enough.
The word echoed through his mind as a shield against the memories. He refused to think about it, the death and destruction. No more.
He got close to the scent. He stopped, hiding in the trees. He watched. A man had a small fire going in a little clearing, a piece of flat metal suspended over the flame with wire and sticks. He was sitting on his haunches, poking at the frying meat with a long branch.
The man was naked. White. Strong. Tan. Fair. Beautiful.
John didn’t know what to think. Friend or foe? Please be friend, please, he pleaded with Fate.
Trusting his life to whatever she decided, he stood up and walked out from the trees, open hands up in front of his chest in the act of surrender.
The man started and stood up to his full height, the same as Johnny’s. They stared at each other, blue eyes into brown ones. The activation occurred. The lightning bolt.
The white man turned away to keep the meat from burning. He slid it off the makeshift skillet onto a flat piece of wood he used for a plate. His naked back was exposed to John. But Hans too had trusted Fate. Whatever happened, happened. Until then, he would live free. He’d had enough of any other way.
Johnny approached cautiously. Hans had only seen a few black men in his life. He hadn’t seen any American soldiers up close. He was scared. But there was no going back. Only forward.
He held out the scrap of wood piled high with roasted pork. He’d killed this piglet yesterday and was cooking up all the meat. He’d found plenty of food here in these mountains. He had been up here since August’s end and he thought it was mid-October now. The weather had been good. He could still go around naked. He would never put that uniform on again. He couldn’t. He had burned it. Hans knew before winter came he would have to find clothes. But for now, he lived without. He had found a small cave against the mountain by the little clearing. An apple tree. Plenty of figs. A plum tree. Some wild grapes. Walnuts. He had stored the apples, dried the other fruit, and gathered the nuts. He could live up here all winter if he found a few clothes. This was the first time he’d had meat in weeks. The brave adolescent cinghiale thought he was old enough to wander without his mother. He’d come for the windfall apples and hadn’t gotten away fast enough.
Hans had a knife and a piece of flint. He’d found some wire and an old wine bottle in his wandering. There was a spring nearby where he filled his bottle every day. He contemplated civilization’s complexity on occasion. How had we lost the ability to live in modern life to the point of wanting to annihilate each other when all a man needed was this, food, shelter, water? Air. He had everything. He didn’t want more.
But when Johnny walked out of the woods, Hans realized having someone to share life with was the only thing he was missing. So he was scared, but he would try. He wasn’t scared of death or violence or pain. He was only scared of deception. Trusting someone he shouldn’t. He was afraid to ever be ruled by something false again.
Johnny took quick steps up to the offered food. Before he reached his hand out, he looked into the other man’s eyes again. Bright blue like the sky overhead. John felt the electricity course through him. The other man nodded and gestured with the plate. John reached out and took some meat, bit into the succulent flesh and let out a small grateful moan.
“Mm.”
Hans smiled and settled down on a rock, plate on his long, golden thighs. Johnny squatted next to him. They both ate, the grease dripping on their chins. Hans’s was covered in a golden beard. His hair had also grown out, shaggy and tousled. Johnny had some stubble after a week of not shaving. His brown eyes shone with gratitude for the food. He still wore his uniform, but it was torn in some places from the crash and his climb over the last few days. He didn’t feel awkward with the other man’s nakedness. It seemed the only sane thing to do, really, when leaving the world behind.
After they finished eating, Johnny gestured toward his clothes. Hans pointed to the fire. Johnny smiled.
He emptied his pockets, stripped off, and threw the uniform in the flames. They might both die of exposure in a few weeks, but they would die free.
Laughing as the fire danced against the wool and cotton, Hans and Johnny shook their fists at the fire and the world at large. Hans showed Johnny around the little cave, the cache of dried fruit and nuts. They tried talking. Neither knew each other’s language. Until they said their names. They were the same. They shook hands at that discovery, ate a couple of dried figs, and curled up on the ground to sleep as the last of the light faded from the valley below.
And so they lived.
Weeks went by. It was getting cold. They slept close together at night to keep each other warm. But it was obvious they must come up with some kind of clothing, and soon.
The village of Santa Restituta had been abandoned for years. Both Hans and Johnny were still suspicious. They didn’t want to encounter anyone. And it seemed likely that anyone from war widows to other deserters might have squatted up here. But they needn’t have worried. There was no one. They walked through the empty streets along the cobblestones. They broke into a couple of houses and found trunks filled with warm peasant clothes. They found some blankets and an old wooden box Johnny liked the look of. Two pairs of boots. Some liquor. A few other things that might come in handy. By now, they had their own way of communicating. Pantomime, a few words. Mostly with their eyes, like they could read each other’s minds. In this way, they discussed if they wanted to move into one of these forgotten houses. Johnny shook his head, and Hans nodded in agreement. They got dressed in black trousers, knit sweaters, heavy coats. They carried the blankets, booze, box, bits and bobs back up the hill. Johnny had an idea.
He’d been playing with the wire for a while now, trying to draw out sound. Back home, he’d seen the old timers simply tie a piece of wire to a porch post and get blues from it. He’d also heard cigar box guitars. So he started his project. With the bits he’d lifted from the houses, the hinge and the nails and a bit of wood and the wood box, he did his best. When he was done, it wasn’t pretty. But he had put together something. And it sounded pretty good. He made a slide from a bottle neck. And then he played.
Hans had never heard anything like it in his whole life or even wildest imagination. Cross Road Blues, Catfish Blues, Brown Mama Blues, Parchman Farm Blues, A Spoonful Blues, My Black Mama, Future Blues, Ramblin’ on my Mind, Packin’ Trunk, Hellhound on My Trail, Hard Time Killing Floor Blues, Trouble in Mind.
He loved it.
Eventually, Hans drummed along on whatever was nearby. His leg. The piece of wood. Tapping a stick to a bottle. They sat up there and made music together. All winter long.

Decades later, the guitar made her way to Italy. A Roman who loved the blues he’d first heard from The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and Eric Clapton traced its roots to Muddy Waters in Chicago then all the way back to the Delta. The guitar had been waiting, sitting in a shop on Issaquena Avenue in Clarksdale, Mississippi. The Roman bought the guitar and brought her home. She knew that’s where Johnny was. His bones were in Italy. The Roman sat with the guitar under Castel Sant’Angelo and was given a gift. She sang to him. She sang to him with all the love and fire, passion and sorrow, of all the war and all the peace, all the freedom, all the want, all that had been taken from her, all that had been lost. This music called to thousands of people as they passed by and each one felt it. Every heart felt the longing for her long-lost young man, although they never knew her story. Every heart recognized love.

The Awakening

“Snap out of it, Melissa. That’s your cue,” Jesus, the director, hollers at me.
I shake my head and come back to earth. I don’t know where I go these days. I just check out. I am on stage rehearsing A Streetcar Named Desire. I have been given the lead for the first time in ages, Blanche DuBois. “Sorry,” I mutter. It is late August now. The last four months are as blurred as the last few minutes. I don’t remember any of it very clearly.
I can recall I spent May working my way north through Italy. I spent some time at the beach in Liguria. Then I took the train to Rob’s again. And one afternoon he took me to Saint Guilhem-le-Désert, a village near his. I noticed the shell marker. This place was on the Camino. I left my stuff at Rob’s and started out. I walked for a few weeks and made it to Santiago de Compostela. I took a plane home and then boarded a bus to Lake Tahoe. I needed to keep walking. In July I walked the PCT from Tahoe to Yosemite. I stopped there for a while, camping illegally with some hippies, and then called my folks to come get me. And now I was here, rehearsing a play I memorized thirty years ago.
Blanche is a bitch to play in any state of mind. I wonder if I am up for the task. If I can pull it off, I might win a fucking award though. Because whatever has knocked Blanche around has knocked me around this last year too. Hollow and haunted, I act.
Stanley is played by a beautiful young Black man named Devon. I like him. I like acting with him. Stella is played by a good friend of mine, Az. They renamed themself that a few years ago—because they are everything from A to Z. I want to rename myself, take on a new identity. I have been playing different roles for years, but when the run is over, I am back to being Melissa West. I want to erase Melissa West from existence. I want to be the opposite of Az—wordless, nothing. I ponder nicknames instead of focusing on the scene. It’s okay, Stanley is having a meltdown. I have a few minutes. Void? A little depressing. How about a symbol, like Prince used? He was certainly ahead of the times. The image of Pietro’s tattoo enters my mental vision. What is that on his chest? I shake my head, returning to the present moment in time for my next cue. Hey, at least I won’t get fired today.
At the end of the day, Jesus comes up to me. “Good work today. Mostly. Stay focused, will ya?”
“I will try,” I tell Jesus. I grab my bag and head out. I feel like walking. So I walk, not really caring where I am going. The days are long this time of year. I walk along Mason Street and turn left automatically at Columbus. Everywhere fucking reminders of Italy—AltoVino, Trattoria Contadina, Luisa’s Wine Bar, Gemme Verdi cannibis, The Italian Homemade Company, Joe DiMaggio Playground, Columbus Avenue, Cioppino’s, Capurro’s, Alioto’s, Ghirardelli, the Galileo Academy and every other corner a pizza place. I want to forget how to read.
I end up at a place called Black Point. And this sign makes me laugh my ass off. Yes, Universe. I am at a black point. It has been pretty dark around here for a while. I texted Pietro’s phone a few times over the last four months. And while they are blue iMessages and say “delivered” or sometimes “read,” I haven’t received a reply or been unblocked on Telegram. It is time to give up. I am at the blackest point of my life.
I listen to meditations on letting go. I do affirmations. I have even started praying in my desperation. I want to be free. But I know it is a lie, and so does the Universe. I don’t really want to be free. When I am honest with myself, that is the last thing I want. I want to be with him.
And then I start to think about how many times I think “I want.”
Too many.
I look out over the water of the bay. Alcatraz, the inescapable prison. We all live in inescapable prisons, our own fucking heads. The Golden Gate Bridge, beautiful and strong. Our bodies. Sky and water, heart and soul. We are here. Connected, one. I’ve lied to myself so long I don’t remember what is true and what is false anymore. The lie was more. If I have more, am more, do more, want more, get more, I will be better and therefore happy. And that is bullshit. I am finally starting to see that. All the weeks of walking without more than what I was wearing and a credit card taught me we don’t need much. The credit card helped me get food and shelter at the end of the day. When I lived with the hippies, I didn’t even need the credit card.
“Snap out of it, Melissa, that’s your cue.” Jesus’s words from earlier echo in my mind. I look around. This isn’t the safest place to be. I should head home.
I give up walking for the day and order a Lyft.
Riding in the car back to my neighborhood, the word Want keeps playing in my mind. Want as a god. Another idol to worship, like I have worshipped Pietro. More. Want. More. Pietro.
I think about walking.
Maybe I should follow the path I am on as I followed those trails all summer. Simply. One foot in front of the other. Keep going until I have to stop.
Wherever you go, there you are. I thought I had made peace with that long ago, and maybe I had for that place in my life. But now something radical had shifted within.
The bees had woken up. The ancient lady. All the other memories that had stirred. The thread of time, how it layers on itself like folded fabric or a ball of string. The grand design of it all. All the theater, the grand pageant.
The electricity. The lightning bolt.
The violence.
I consider myself a peaceful person seeking light. But Pietro had stirred up all the shadow and darkness within me. And now I am at the black point. How do I get back into the light?
The car pulls to a stop in front of my house. It is a pretty house, gray and gabled with white trim. I say thank you to the driver and get out of the car. I am home.
Wherever you go, there you are. I cannot run—or walk—away from the truth. I am a mess. That isn’t Pietro’s fault.
It is mine.
I open the door to my house. The inside is immaculate, beautiful, and well-designed. How do I get whatever is in me to look the same way as this house?
That is what I need to figure out. And hopefully soon, before I am completely off my rocker. As I cross the threshold into the foyer, words rattle through me. “When in doubt, go within.” I don’t know what that means. But I do know there is a massive disparity between my internal and external worlds. I am ready for some coherence.

The season is off to a great start. Personally, I liked last year’s shows better, and still debate whether or not I should have retired at the end. But in light of all that happened, or didn’t happen, I make the best of the fact that I am kept busy playing Blanche and then Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. We will also do Henry V and Sweet Bird of Youth this fall. Tennessee Williams wrote several one act plays and we have a run of these planned with some Shakespearean sonnets and soliloquies on those evenings. In spring, the program is The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Othello and Twelfth Night. I try to work up enthusiasm for the line up. They are all good plays. I like being on the stage more than I have been the last few years. But, honestly, I am burned out.
The theater director would like me to go to New York when Streetcar is finished. I am thinking about it. I haven’t spent time in New York in a couple of years. It’s funny, when I was starting out I would jump at an opportunity like this. I know the younger members of our company would. It might be time to pass the torch. How do you know?
Because once you pass the sacred fire on to the next person, it is gone. You don’t ever get it back.
I am not sure I am ready. Right now, I will focus, as Jesus suggested, on my performance. This is the reason I give the theater director and she doesn’t argue with it.
Blanche DuBois. Shadow and light.

I do give a hell of a performance. This time I am written up in Time magazine. I have rarely received any national press and it is an honor, regardless of what I think of the media in general. Everything that belongs to the world is becoming dimmer for me—politics and government, institutions of any kind, media and entertainment. I don’t even like reading very much anymore. I listen to music and stare off into space during my free time. Sometimes I am thinking, and sometimes my mind evaporates and I am gone.
When I come back from those times, I usually feel peaceful. Like coming out of shavasana in yoga. I wonder if it has to do with the ancient lady. I talk to her sometimes. Ask her to guide me along. I talk to the Universe too. I talk to myself. I talk to plants and birds and insects. Trees. This started on the trail. I would talk to the people I met out there too. We all have a story, our story we are living. I walked for a few days with a Canadian physician. She was tall and graceful. When I learned her story, I felt like such a brat for wallowing in my own nonsense. Some people have it really hard. And keep going.
My only real problem is a man I love doesn’t love me back. Or maybe he does, but he doesn’t want to be with me. I replay that last conversation over and over in my head. I worry about his mysterious health problems. I try not to stalk him on the internet too often, but sometimes I slip. His photographs are beautiful. This is how he sees, and more than that, can bring his vision to us. Shadow and light.
It has been more than five months now since I have heard from him. But he is in my heart and mind constantly. Sometimes, I wonder if I can feel him. Thoughts drift into my head that don’t seem like mine. But I work on my thoughts. I work on my self.
And I come to realize I am more than my thoughts. My thoughts belong to my mind, my ego. Who am I behind or beyond that mask?
When did I start to act?
 I’ve been slipping out of myself into other roles since I was a child. I can remember very far back without hypnosis. I can remember Christmas when I was one. I was twenty months old. I remember it very well. I dig deep in my memory of this life and stir up the bottom of it. I started inhabiting the characters of my toys, my dolls and stuffed animals. My sister is seven years younger than I am. All those early years, it was only me. And I wanted friends. So I made them up and we had a lovely imaginary world.
Most children do this, this is nothing extraordinary. But I guess the difference is I never wanted to give it up. I just kept at it. Nothing else ever really interested me. I wasn’t hiding from anything. I wasn’t wearing a mask to pretend I am something I am not. I love acting. I love inhabiting different characters, feeling and thinking from a different point of view. Pooh Bear is different from Eeyore, Piglet is different from Tigger. Whole industries are built around the imagination of an individual. It has been that way for millennia.
I act.
But then my sister was born. I loved my sister, and still love her. But I was no longer the center of attention. And, truth be told, I like being the center of attention. So I started throwing tantrums and rebelling. This lasted through my teenage years but seemed normal. All my friends were rebels too. We loved our rebelliousness.
I thought I had grown out of it. I really did. But when I look at my behavior now, I realize I still throw a fit when I don’t get what I want. Ergo, Pietro. The disaster of my “relationship” with Pietro. I think of the last words I sent him in the cold storm on my birthday. A verbal tantrum via message. What a brat.
Rebellion is another form of tantrum, magnified into a permanent lifestyle. I suppose it depends on what you are rebelling against. In my case, it was my parents who are perfectly fine people in general. And the system at large of which I am still not a big fan. I love walking, alone, in the woods. Admiring vistas and wildflowers, the changing sky and moss clinging to stone. Light on the water, filtering through leaves. All of it beautiful. Then we have the manmade constructs which exist to separate us from universal truths.
Maybe I am still a rebel, but I want to make sure I am standing in opposition to the lies the world tells me to believe, not the Universe or myself. My mind is riddled with doubts and desires. Acting is an amplified form of make-believe, but is make-believe the same as faith? All I know is that when I am acting or walking, this mind of mine quiets. I just am. The incessant stream of chaotic thought evaporates and what remains feels solid and real.
I decide to go to New York after the run. Romeo and Juliet doesn’t start for a month. The one acts are next, and I am not in those.

I go to the Empire Hotel. I like this hotel because my favorite part of New York is Lincoln Center. Creative energy emanates from there. I feel it. The world’s best. I suppose I should like Broadway better, but I don’t.
It is late October and the weather is beautiful. Everything seems beautiful to me here. Manmade constructs surround me, but here—I love them. To me, New York is the very best of humanity.
I walk into a Starbucks on Broadway and 63rd. And run smack dab into Pietro Petronelli.
“Che cazzo,” he blurts out.
I don’t say anything.
I look into his eyes. They are sad again, that’s for sure. He looks a little hollow and haunted too. We have both aged this last year.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
“Working,” I reply.
He tries to take my elbow but I shake him off. I am surprised I am not happy to see him, but I am not.
I feel that for a moment. I am not happy to see him. I am angry and doubtful and irritated.
I was starting to make some progress on myself, straighten myself out after decades of accumulated emotional and mental clutter. And this guy is like putting a full garbage bag in a centrifuge. I don’t want to clean all this up again.
However, I have no choice now. I never did. From the moment we met in the doorway of Cristina’s gallery, I have not stopped thinking of him at some level of my existence. The connection was activated and there is no going back.
And I have sudden, incontrovertible, absolute knowledge that he feels the same. Whatever he says or does.
So I follow him to the counter to the left of the door. We sit on the high stools and look at each other.
“How’ve you been?” he inquires.
“Good.” I see no need to make this easy for him. But then I remember. “I am sorry for throwing a tantrum that last night. On the chat.”
“What?” He looks startled. “Oh, that. I haven’t thought about it. It’s fine.”
Do I want to explain? Explain that I have been working on inner growth and evolution, all the bullshit he suggested when we first met—but not because of him. Because I ran out of other options. Because I need to fix and heal and accept and get to know myself. Otherwise, I will continue to make messes in my relationships, primarily this one.
No, I don’t want to explain. And I don’t want to make excuses either—that it was my birthday and raining and cold and he stood me up. Those are incidental and unimportant.
I find out I don’t want anything in this moment, and this in itself is huge progress. Instead, I am interested in listening if he chooses to talk. Find out what he has to say.
He senses this and raises an eyebrow. “You seem different.”
I shrug. “I’ve been hiking a lot this year. Got some sun damage.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. And I think you look great. It’s good to see you.”
“You’re here for work?”
“Yes, big stars. The big bucks. Couldn’t say no.”
I roll my eyes a little and smile. I can tell he is excited for this one. I am curious who it is, but I don’t ask.
“How long will you be here?”
“Until next week. You?”
“Same.” My hopes are rising in spite of myself.
He reaches over and brushes my knee with his hand. “I’ve missed you.”
“Have you unblocked me yet?”
“I did, actually. But you didn’t write.”
“Neither did you.”
He smirks at that. “True.”
There is a pause, a silence.
He grimaces. “I am really sorry, I have to go.”
“Okay.”
“Let me know if you want to have dinner sometime,” he says as he stands up.
I am annoyed that he is putting that on me, but I can’t think of the right thing to say in time. He leans over and pecks my cheek. In spite of my resolve, my hand goes to his chest. To feel his heartbeat, for only a moment.
He smiles, that fucking devilish melt-me smile, and heads out the door. He forgets his coffee. So I take it and drink it, sitting in the sunshine outside Lincoln Center. The poster for La Bohème sparks a memory. This has happened to me so many times these last months, since I met Pietro. I feel memories, maybe people we’ve been before. The poster shows a couple outside on a snowy evening, she’s wearing a shawl or scarf over her head and he has his arm around her. They hold each other, somber. I remember being forced out of our home, on the move during a time of political and social upheaval. The only thing we have is each other. We leave Russia for the United States, for New York. Poor, so poor. Trying to stay warm. Trying not to die, but only staying alive for the other. So many layers of memories, the ball of twine I found. Wonder what happened to them? I search within but there is no distinct answer. But I feel we’ve been here before, maybe this very spot. The earth holds memories and when the veil thins, they are my memories. I finish his coffee in the bright sunshine, warm now. Warm, but no arm around me.

I wait all week, but I hear nothing from him. I check Telegram. He has unblocked me, last seen recently.
I’ve been running all over the theater district, reconnecting with old friends, enjoying their acclaim, getting job offers. Having lunch and drinks and dinner with glamorous, intelligent, creative people. Waiting.
Nothing.
Lying on my hotel bed late Saturday night, it hits me. This is this chapter in my life. This scene, this act. But this is a hell of a long play. No, we are in a story as I realized on the Camino. The Book of Life. If you only gave one page per day of life, I would be on page 1870 or something. That is a lot of living.
I see myself, a menopausal, aging actress. Left by one man, in love with another. I am a character. Who is the author?
Oh.
I have been written. The one, the source, the universe, whatever you want to call it/him/her/they, the awareness, consciousness—
I am a bit of the divine disguised from itself. An actor in the play.
The truth of this hits me like a lightning bolt, the same one that struck me and activated the connection with Pietro.
Well, who is he then?
And I find out. We are the same. There is no he and I, like I felt that first night. There is only we. I, without ego. One.
We are made of the same soul, from the same unit of consciousness split into our current forms at incarnation. I wanted to come here. He wanted to come. We chose all of this together. This is our soul’s evolution of consciousness. All those past incarnations were leading to this.
Therefore he needs me, feels me, loves me in the exact way I do him. We are more than connected in any relationship. We are much more than this animated human flesh or our current identities. We are bound in the other dimension, the place I keep disappearing to but can’t remember. I feel an intense stillness come over me.
Whether I ever see or hear or touch him again in this life does not matter. If this is true, and we are connected—bound, the same soul code—there is no way to change it. And if we are not, if none of this is true, time will make it fade away. It is that simple.
It is up to the author of the play, of the book. No need to rebel, to fight, to struggle. I am not in charge. I am not the producer or director. I am playing my part. And it is a great part I get to sink my teeth into every moment of every day. Play the hell out of it.
I surrender my will. The story will unfold as written.

In Between—The Multitudes

We exit the theater, talking about everything we just saw. Even though we have watched this before, the epic is always spectacular. We look around at the jubilant crowd dispersing after the concert and walk to a fountain in the middle of the piazza outside the concert hall. The silvery water flows in a constant stream and makes a rushing sound. We sit on the edge of the fountain and listen, watch, feel the energy force of flow.
We go out for a drink and discuss quantum entanglement, how thoughts exist in the energy field, creating emotion, the hormonal responses programmed into our avatars’ biology corresponding directly to the electromagnetic trigger. How the engine of the world runs on this. The space between particles. How changing the state of one instantaneously changes the state of the other. The holographic principle that every fragment contains information about the entire system, our genetic code, our energetic code, any change reflected throughout its entirety. We discuss cardiac coherence, the interconnectedness of all things making us the product and co-creators of the web of existence. The empty space between things teems with energy fields and subatomic particles and how our avatars in the matrix can use prayer and meditation to interact with the field. We walk back to the fountain in the center of the piazza.
When our players in the game make love, we send and receive an exchange of frequency. Love flows like water, ceaselessly poured out and always full. This is the greatest mystery, even here in the In Between.
The trumpets sound and we rejoin the other concert-goers for the next part of the program.

Melisande

From my house above Saint Jean de Fos, Languedoc

My name is Melisande. For forty years, my body has been used to satisfy others. But I have a mind, a heart, and a soul. Not one has loved me for those. So I have learned to love myself.
I am in my sixth decade now, safe and secure in the upstairs chamber of my own house. I live alone, unwanted by anyone. So I have learned to want myself.
I have been retired as mistress. I don’t have to ask anyone anything to exist as myself. I am and will be until I am no more.
My name is Melisande. I am writing this for no one except myself. To remember how I got here, and hopefully to find some thread in the story of my life that will connect all of the pieces together like pearls on a string.
Do I go backward or forward in time? From my most recent memories, tracing back to the beginning? I can peel back the layers to the origin. Or start from the beginning, the first thing I remember and build my story forward? Or do I go right to the center, the core, the beautiful pendant on the necklace—the one thing I can never forget?
Can I slide around in my memory from one thing to the next?
Since I only write this for myself…
I am here in my house on the hill above the castle. In the surrounding valleys, I see the vineyards changing to gold in the late October sunshine. The grapes have been harvested and are turning to wine. Soon the vines will be cut. But right now, for this moment in time, the world is golden all around me. The river Hérault flows down its gorge to the Devil’s Bridge and on to the sea.
I can hear the village church bells in the distance, but they never call me to come into the sanctuary. I hear the voice of God in them from here on my hilltop and hope He knows I am listening. But people go to the church, people who have as little use for me as I do for them.
The fact that I can write at all is something I am proud of. Something I did for myself years ago. I stole my knowledge. It was not offered to me. Am I proud that I stole it? I suppose so. Should I ask God to forgive me for that? Was it a sin? He knows my story better than I do, and I imagine that is the least of my sins. But, no matter what this body has done in sin, this body that usually had little choice in the matter, my mind, heart, and soul are untouched and pure. Except for secretly learning to read and write. So I hope He will forgive me if I have done wrong.
My beginnings are ordinary. I was a daughter, someone’s little girl. We lived in a village two days ride from here. My father was a blacksmith, smelling of iron and smoke. My mother kept our small home and my brother and myself out of trouble. We tended the garden and the chickens and a couple of goats. My brother started working with my father. And I grew up and started bleeding. I was twelve. So that summer, they found a husband for me.
He was a good man, handsome and kind. He seemed old to me, but he was young. And the first one to possess my body.
I suppose it is time to mention the one salient fact about me that is unavoidable.
I have a complicated relationship with them. They’ve saved my life many times and helped me end up in comfort in this house. But they have also caused me a lot of trouble.
My breasts.
My breasts have been the object of lust for scores of people. I didn’t ask for these breasts, I had no control over their development. One year I went from innocent flat-chested little girl walking barefoot in my mother’s garden to spread-eagled on a bed being rutted by my husband as he squeezed my very large, firm breasts together in his rough hands. This was the beginning.
My husband’s name was Michael and he was a farmer. I told myself I loved him, because that is what I was supposed to do. I was twelve and he was in his twenties. I think he was twenty-four when we married if I remember correctly. I thought he was so old then, but now I know how wrong I was. He was virile and strong and young. He had gold hair and dark blue eyes. A beautiful smile. I knew how to keep house and found my new life rather simple and easy. The same as before—garden, chickens, goats. Michael went out into his vines each morning and didn’t come back until dark. Midday, one of the farm boys would come to the house and pick up the lunch I had ready.
We were married two years. Two sweet years. Maybe I was too young to enjoy the nightly rut, but I did enjoy it. I enjoyed it a lot. Looking back—and maybe this is why I am looking back—what role has lust played in my own heart? Maybe it isn’t so pure after all.
Nevertheless, I was young and married and allowed to be fucked by my husband. Sanctioned by the church and the world. The next thing I was supposed to do was breed. The first year, I didn’t catch. But early in the spring of the second year, I did. My breasts grew even larger and more tender, my belly swelled. I no longer had the monthly bleeds I detested. Michael still came in me every night and the pleasure was even more intense as my insides contracted around him. I felt fecund, ripening like fruit. This was one of the most contented periods of my life. My kitchen garden was growing beautifully, the goats had kids, new chicks running around, the vines were green and flowering, my belly was growing, my husband was handsome and strong and kind.
I would like to dwell on this memory. I sit here at my desk, looking out the window, lost in this time. But I know what came next. The shadow looms over the memory like a dark storm cloud. Why can’t I train my mind not to see it? To simply live in those green spring days, walking barefoot in the earth of my garden, bending over my little belly to pull out stray weeds.
That’s what I was doing when I smelled it—smoke. Our farm was nearly a half hour’s walk from the village, but even from that distance I could hear the screaming. I moved to where I could see better. The village was burning. Michael came running in from the fields. Before we had decided what to do next, the choice was made for us. A company of horsemen galloped up the road, torches in hand. We had heard there was war, but thought it was far away from our peaceful, quiet corner of the county.
I won’t write too much of what happened—I know. The house was burned, Michael was killed, I was raped. They had stripped me to the waist and tied me to the hitching post. This may be the first time my breasts saved my life. The soldiers were fascinated by them. And distracted. Because the lord arrived with his guard and slaughtered the enemy troops to a man.
He himself dismounted and untied me. He covered my nakedness with his own cloak and lifted me to his horse. And took me home.
To the castle on the hill I see below me now.
An expansion of an ancient Roman fort, the castle covers acres of land on this hillside, with terraces, towers, turrets, and the huge wall surrounding it. The valley is covered in vines and crops and the hills are covered in woods. My house is at the crest of the hill, just inside the castle wall. There are still many trees up here and no other houses. I am outcast, but not completely cast out just yet. A good place to be.
But the lord brought me to the castle and left me with the cook to recover from my ordeal.
I would like to skip ahead in my memory now. And it is my memoir, so I shall. If someone ever wants to know all that transpired, perhaps I will write that someday. But since this is only for me, I will skip over the adventures with the lord and his lady, the guards and their captain, my time in the woods. Guillaume, the heir. My own son who is now a soldier somewhere far from here. The crippled Duke and his manservant. So many adventures. People who have used my body for sex or sustenance. I became wet nurse to the heir who was born one month after my own son. I witnessed their rivalry from the beginning.
And I will come to the heart of the matter. The part I will never understand or forget.
His name is Jean-Pierre Bequet. To me, he is Jipi—Jean Petit, Little John. Jipi. It looks funny when I write it. But I say it in my head, the echo raining down through time. Jipi.
So I will write Jean. Jipi looks silly in this ink on this paper. Jean-Pierre Bequet is a musician. He travels the country, singing for his supper and bed. It looks so simple when I write it. My memory looks at these little words and remembers so much more. When he walked into the hall. My heart stopping. My senses stopping. All I could see or hear or feel was his presence.
Shall I describe him? Thin, tall, lanky. I was in my twenties then, and so was he. Golden hair and blue eyes like my husband, but his eyes were the color of the sky and Michael’s were dark. Oh, those eyes. Jipi pierced me with them.
I was in full flower then. The boys were ten years old, terrors around the castle with mischief and pranks. The lord had gone to war. The lady had passed away two years before. I was in charge, at least of the hall. The castle’s defense was left to the guards and the captain.
So Jean-Pierre walked in late one autumn afternoon—maybe today, whatever today is. Sometime in October. Maybe that is why I am writing about him today. Maybe, without my realizing it, some deep part of myself knows exactly so many full moons have passed since that day. How many is it? More than three hundred. Three hundred plus three dozen if I am doing the math right.
Oh well, what does it matter? In my head, it is always that day. More than ten thousand days ago. How funny is that? How we get trapped in the amber of moments we can’t escape.
He walked in, tall and thin and with those piercing eyes. He walked up to the table, escorted by a nonchalant guard who saw in him no threat. I sat in my place at the head table, the lord’s recognized mistress.
He asked to sing for me. And that was the beginning.
And the middle.
And, ultimately, the end.
We passed the winter together, making love under fur blankets. I conceived for the second time in my life. Only with my husband and with my love did my body allow new life to be formed.
I can’t write much more. I am tired. I thought I could look at these memories and try to make some sense of them, but all that is happening is the old wound is reopened. I loved him. I still do. I have spent nearly thirty years without him. Had scores of lovers since. But no one else in my heart. Except for the child he left me, my little girl. And she is gone too, back with the angels where she belongs. She was too beautiful for this earth. As much as it hurts to write or think this, I am glad she never had to be a woman.
Being a woman on this earth…
To be used and worn down with time—
No, little beauty, live free.

The Ascension

I am standing at a red light on the corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue when it happens. The best I can describe it is like when the Star Trek characters are about to be beamed up and they dissolve into light. I feel like a beam of light splits the sky and transforms my whole being into particles of light. I am empowered from on high, and within. I know I can do anything, and that I will do exactly what I am supposed to do in this life. There is no other possibility.
The only possible course of action is the action I take. So while I feel I am deciding something with many choices in front of me, whatever path I choose is my path and my only path. And so there is no way for me to become lost. Wherever you go, there you are. This is my course through life. This is my journey. And the same holds true for every other single soul.
We may feel we have detoured off the main highway or gotten bogged down, broken, misguided, fallen off a cliff. Any of these are possible. But that is the path. That is the road. There is no other possibility for this particular person in this particular experience. The script is written as we live it and is already written simultaneously. Our lives are the experience of the written script. As real as anything.
The flip side is also true. We are therefore empowered to do anything. Anything we set ourselves to, whatever direction. And the direction you feel you should go is the designated direction of your path. This is the story of your life.
It is possible that in a different script our same self makes different decisions and inhabits a different path, that there are infinite versions of ourselves. Every single decision point is an opportunity to build the path, the script, the journey. In a way, this is irrelevant. Because the one existing now in this dimension is the only one that does or can possibly exist in this dimension. You are exactly who you are meant to be doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing. Which feels counterintuitive to forward motion but the path is purposely hidden, invisible, dark, and only revealed as walked.
Because ultimately we are each a disguised piece of the divine.
This is the only thing that makes sense.
I feel this absolutely as I stand on a busy corner in Manhattan. We are in the play. Inhabiting character.
And then I sense this golden energy inside. And I know it is him. My other half, yang to my yin. We are an energy code, quantum particles entangled through time and space.
My high school science classes did not fully prepare me for this exploration of physics and understanding of energy, I know that much. I don’t know the explanation of this. But I do know that now I know who I am, who he is, who everyone is, who God is, why we are here, what we are doing, and where we end up. And that seems pretty good.
We are here to take a journey within. We are to enter the world, be broken by it in some way, face our pain, heal, become whole, and embody unconditional love.
All things track toward love. That is where we are all going.
It takes more than one time through the matrix.
We learn our lessons each time and ideally as our understanding grows, the lessons add up until we accomplish our purpose. Unconditional love. And then we re-enter Source and it starts all over. The water shows the cycle. A drop from the sky hits the ground, rolls its way to the the river which flows into the ocean, evaporates to the cloud and comes tumbling back to earth. So do we.
We each have an energy code. And corresponding codes. All the people who weave in and out of our lives, the fabric of time and space a great tapestry spun from the source of all that was, is, shall be. The Being.
This all becomes clear to me as I stand there on the corner.
I take a deep breath and look around, re-inhabiting the three-dimensional reality around me. It is a beautiful fall day in New York City. I sense the soles of my shoes against the sidewalk, the soles of my feet inside the shoes, my calves, knees, and thighs, my pelvis and gut and breasts and arms and neck and head. The light changes to green and I walk with everyone else across Fifth Avenue to the park side. The people around me disperse, all going their own ways. I sense. Where am I going?
I have nowhere in particular that I am supposed to be according to my calendar. I did my errand on the East Side and the next thing is a drink with my friend Mandy from the Shubert at half past five. It is now two. Part of me wants to head back to the hotel and lie down. To just feel.
I enter the park. I see the multitudes laid out before me. The Sheep Meadow is open. I take off my jacket and spread it on the ground. I take off my shoes and feel my toes in the grass. I hike up my trouser cuffs to my knees and lay back to watch the sky, here with hundreds of others in the middle of the city. I sense the golden energy under my skin, floating like champagne bubbles.
“Is it you?” I ask.
I don’t hear words in reply. More like a temperature of the energy. Warm energy flowing through me. Over time, I discover that the energy will become cold or staccato or sexual or heavy. I don’t know if this corresponds to what he is experiencing now in the three-dimensional reality of time and space or something that is happening in our higher selves which are now communicating freely. I don’t even really know what a higher self is. All I know is my ancient lady is up to something, and all the other memories or flashes of other lives seem to be involved in some way, but there is also a space for only two—really one. Pietro and I experiencing energetic telepathy in another dimension.
So I lie there in the Sheep Meadow and simply feel. The earth beneath, the sky above, the air within. The heartbeats around me. The energy inside me. I am alive, in the here and now, and in all the spaces in between.

The Book of Life

The multitudes stream toward the throne room. The concert ends as humanity is coming into existence.
The next presentation is The Book of Life. There is fanfare as it is opened. This is the entire recording of all human events and all possible pathways from every decision point.
You are currently in The Book of Life. You, reading this record.
It is an ongoing story with infinite plot lines. Yet there is only one possible for you to inhabit.
We, the energetic echoes of the characters inhabiting the Book, view the story as a whole, all at once. Only the fact that we are all members of the godhead allows us to grasp its complexity. In life, all we are and we are all bits of the divine imagination authored into existence. Our physical and energetic properties are derivatives from the only consciousness. We all contain the Universe within and we are all physical and energetic manifestations of this consciousness. For millennia all over the globe, philosophies and religions have created words to try to describe in language this experience—mana, Maya, teotl, qi, aloha, apeiron. Even the ancient Greeks had an altar “to an unknown god” that Paul explained to them was this divine being from whom all things originate. The word universe within itself has its own definition, one story, one tale, all interconnected. This is the game, the matrix. Truthfully, there is no quantum gravity, no theory of everything, big bang, point of origin—there is only the manifestation of Universe’s consciousness as an energetic matrix appearing to its inhabitants as material.
The story of our life. It is being played right now.
Every day lasts forever. There is only one possible way for you to live this life. There are no mistakes. At every decision point there are potential realities that branch off for everyone therefore creating infinite pathways and stories. But you take the only possible path for this character in this incarnation. There are undeciphered languages written all around us speaking our stories into existence with every breath of wind, photon of light, and drop of water. All things are known, all energy is recorded. Every cell, every fiber of being, plant, insect, bird, grain of sand known by the One. All of our experience is only subjective and part of Universal consciousness. Yours is on your palm, in your eye, your stars, your heartbeat, everything unique to you. Your soul is connected through time and space in an intricately designed web, in what is already written. And every one of us has a purpose in this story, or we would not exist just as a character in a play or book does not exist unless it furthers the action or enriches the telling in some way.
So we live our lives, our stories in The Book of Life. And we will give the best we have within us, the performance of a lifetime.

Greece

“Can we keep her, Papa?” the little girl asked. “Can we?” Her big brown eyes implored his. She had found a tiny black and white kitten on the side of the road as they returned home from the market.
“No, Méli.”
“Please?” she wheedled. She was fond of lost things, having once been a lost thing herself.
“It’s not a good idea,” the old man responded. But he already felt himself weakening as he looked at the little girl holding the mewing kitten. The girl was his heart.
The old man was in his seventh decade. Pémptos had tried to do everything right his whole life. He had fought in the wars and survived. He had married the girl his parents picked out for him. He had worked the land. He had fathered a son. Sadly, the birth of the child had killed the mother. He had raised his son for fifteen years until the youth walked away one summer day and was not heard from again. And the father became old, moment by moment, day after day. He had learned to read, slowly, in the evenings, solving the code of letters and then mastering them. The letters became words, paragraphs, chapters, books. He read all he could get his hands on. Living in the hills of Attica a full day’s walk from either Athens or Thebes, he rarely went to either. But on occasion, a peddler or traveler came through his village with a book to sell. Pémptos would take home the scroll, unroll it carefully in the fading light and read until his eyes grew tired. He refused to waste money on lamplight to read, and cherished longer summer evenings.
This had been his life for thirty years until late last summer. And then she came.
Méli. He had named her honey.
She had big dark eyes and gold tipped lashes. Her skin was dusky olive, darker than his who’d spent his life in the sun. Her hair was chestnut brown with gold strands woven through it. She was serious and small and sad. He estimated she was around six years old.
She didn’t know her story, and at first, would scarcely speak. He had thought she was completely mute the first week she was with him. And then one afternoon of autumn equinox sunshine, she asked for an apple. So he reached up into the tree and picked her one. And this was the beginning. Nearly anything she asked for, he gave to her.
So now as they strolled home from the morning spent selling the extra produce of the week, he felt his heart melt again and acquiesced. “All right, Méli, all right.”
“Thank you, Papa, thank you!” Méli bounced, jarring the kitten in her arms. The kitten shifted around and Pémptos was afraid it would scratch Méli, but it did not. This was a gentle cat, grateful to be rescued from where she’d been dumped in the ditch that morning by a less soft-hearted farmer.
“What will you name her?” Pémptos asked.
Méli thought hard for a while, walking along the packed dirt road that led up to the little stone house carved into the side of the hill. “I don’t know, Papa. What do you think?”
“There’s no hurry, Méli. You can think about it for a while and decide later.”
Méli nodded and studied her kitten’s tiny face. It had a mask of black over gold eyes and white cheeks and jaw. The body was mainly white with a big black patch like a saddle over its back, and a long black tail. Méli smiled to herself and to her kitten and Pémptos and the world in general. It was a good day.
They reached the doorway to the house and she set the kitten down on the ground. Then they sat on their bench outside the door to rest their feet after the long walk from the village. “Are you hungry?” Pémptos asked, knowing the answer already.
Méli nodded. She was always hungry. The best he could figure was that she didn’t know her father and then her mother had died. He didn’t know how or where. No one nearby knew her or claimed her. When she finally told him all of her story that she could remember, she had told him that her mother had been sick. One day her mother wouldn’t move anymore and was cold so Méli had walked to find help. She had walked on the road for a long time and didn’t see anyone. She had spent at least three nights on the side of the road, hiding in some bushes or trees. Then she had seen some men on the road, but they were rough and loud and scared her so she hid in the woods before they saw her. She got lost in the forest. So she walked in the woods, spending two nights there, and then she found a road. And it led her here.
This was nearly a year ago as summer was once again drawing to a close. Pémptos had fallen deeply in love with this child. He didn’t know he could love like this. His heart had not been touched before. He didn’t really understand why. Was it some softening of old age? The chance to raise a daughter? To make up for losing his wife and son? He didn’t know. All he knew was that, for this first time in his long life, every morning when he woke up he was happy to be alive. That he felt like protecting her was the only thing that mattered. That she was a gift from heaven.
Méli waited patiently at the table while Pémptos prepared the main meal of the day. They had some bread from the market and homemade cheese from their goats. Some greens from their garden. Figs and apples. A little honey to sweeten everything. They ate off clay dishes his wife had brought with her dowry all those years ago, glazed black. The kitten was curled into Méli’s thigh where she sat on her bench. “Did you think of a name yet?” Pémptos asked as he quartered the apple for them.
Méli shook her head. “Is it a boy or a girl?” she asked.
“She is a girl,” Pémptos replied. “Does that help you decide?”
Méli shrugged, thinking.
“Hm,” Pémptos prompted. “What does she remind you of?”
“Love. Sunshine. The sky. Flowers,” Méli answered, looking down at the kitten and petting her back.
Pémptos smiled. Such innocence, even after enduring a tragedy. “Well, those are all beautiful things.”
“Yes. She is all the beautiful things.”
“Be careful, Méli,” Pémptos warned. “Don’t get too attached. You never know what might happen.”
Méli looked up with her big dark eyes full of worry.
Pémptos kicked himself for saying that.
“But nothing will happen,” he continued. “We will feed her and love and care for her and she will be fine. She will help us around the house killing insects and mice. And keep your feet warm at night in bed,” Pémptos smiled.
Méli looked pacified. “Yes, Papa.”
“So, what shall we name her?”
“χαρά,” Méli smiled, taking the kitten in her arms and holding her like a baby. The kitten purred.
Xapá meant Joy.

Two more peaceful years went by. Every day was the same and different. Time felt like it stood still sometimes, but Pémptos knew that was impossible. The daily routine was the same. Wake and have breakfast, chores around the house and garden, study with Méli. A meal and rest. Walk and supper. Singing and bedtime. Méli sang beautifully. Pémptos taught her all the songs he knew and she made many more up in the moment. Then she would curl up on his lap while he told her a story and she would drift off to sleep, content and secure. Pémptos would regard her pretty hair glinting gold and red in the firelight, content himself, and eventually deposit her sleeping form to her bed. He would walk out and say good night to the stars, to the gods, grateful for the good day.
Xapá had grown into a large, loving cat. Pémptos was thankful she seemed to be sterile. No more kittens. However, Méli had found birds with broken wings and lizards with lost tails and toads and a baby deer who had grown up and gone back into the forest. Once, Méli had even wanted to keep a scorpion but Pémptos had talked her out of it. He taught her to read and write and play a lyre he made to accompany her singing. The days passed in this routine, but slow changes occurred. The seasons’ temperature and daylight hours, the different festivals in the marketplace. And Méli growing up.
Pémptos did his best to ignore the fact that puberty was approaching. He could hardly stand the thought of his little girl becoming a woman. Finding a husband for her. Losing her. So instead, he taught her all he knew about why the temperature and daylight hours changed and what the festivals were celebrating. During their study hours, he recited the stories of the gods and heroes and wars and journeys the poets had written. They analyzed leaves and rocks and light and wind. They stretched their muscles. They had races up and down the hill he invariably lost. Méli was fleet and strong. She loved to climb, everything from rocks and trees to the tops of walls and buildings. They played games with dice and marbles. They had shouting contests. He taught her arithmetic and geometry. They counted things, seedlings and pebbles and eggs and stones of the wall of the house. They multiplied and divided the numbers they counted. They drew circles and squares and trapezoids in the dirt. They made three-dimensional shapes from clay. Pémptos loved her inquisitive mind and how she seemed to absorb everything.
Whatever interest she had that day, he would follow and teach her all he knew about it, indulging her curiosity.
But sometimes she wouldn’t listen. She’d had her eye on an apple near the top of the tree for some time. The tree was outside the window, a little downhill on the slope so she had plenty of time to observe this apple’s growth. She had watched it form from flower to little solid, green, and gather the sunshine of the whole summer to become a vibrant pink. It looked so happy, this apple. It was bigger and brighter than the other apples because it caught the best of the sun. So Méli decided it was time to eat it.
She climbed trees nearly every day but she had never had to go so high. She considered. Perhaps the best way might be to go from the roof of the house? She looked at the roof. She could get up there, but there were several feet between the roof and the branch. She didn’t think she could reach. They had a long stick with a sort of hand on the end made from branches they used to pick the high apples. But it wasn’t long enough for her pink apple. She asked Pémptos how they should get the apple.
“I don’t think we can yet, Méli. That is one we might have to wait for. Until it falls.” Pémptos smiled at his daughter. Her hair was like honey after the summer’s sunshine. Her skin and eyelashes were almost the same color as her hair. Only her deep brown eyes created a contrasting color which made them all the more striking.
Méli pressed her lips together in annoyance. She did not like waiting.
So as Pémptos went to check the water for the goats, Méli started up the tree. She had climbed this tree a hundred times. She knew where to lodge her foot to boost herself into it. And where she could sit on a branch and watch the sky through the leaves. But she wasn’t sure how to get to that pink apple. She kept climbing. The little branches poked her. One scratched through the skin on her arm. She put her left foot into a branch and then her right into one up higher. There. She thought she was high enough.
Pémptos came around the corner of the house and heard the tree branches rustling. “Méli, what are you doing up there? Come down,” he called.
“I’ve almost got it, Papa.” She reached her hand out.
“Come down this instant!” He raised his voice. He had never had to do that before.
“Just a minute,” she called back. She reached for the apple, touched it, closed her fist around it, and tried to pull it off the branch. It wouldn’t come free.
“Méli!” Pémptos was beside himself. She had never defied him, but he had never tried to assert his authority before. He wasn’t sure what to do. He stood there helplessly, looking up into the tree. The leaves and branches and fruit hid her. He felt a coldness seize his heart.
“Come on,” Méli muttered, straining forward to tug harder at the apple. The apple came free into her hand as underneath her forward foot something shifted and snapped and she lost her balance, crashing through the branches and plunging through the air toward the ground. She had been about twice as high as a man in the tree, but it was high enough. Pémptos rushed to try to catch her but the impact was too much. They both fell to the ground with a crash. Pémptos fell against a rock in the ground as they toppled over. Méli gashed her forehead open on it and Pémptos broke his arm. The apple fell from her hand and rolled away, forgotten.
This incident and its long recovery brought unwanted change into the house. The peaceful routine, the gentle solicitude were damaged now along with their bodies. Méli’s concussion took a long time to heal and Pémptos’ arm even longer. She had blinding headaches and he had his arm in a sling after a painful bone-setting by the local woman who did such things. Distrust fomented. They way they looked at each other changed as each tried to cope with their physical limits of pain and diminished abilities.
Winter set in. Méli’s headaches were less frequent now and Pémptos could use his weakened arm again. They each longed for the peaceful days of summer before the accident. Xapá curled up in front of the fire and slept, oblivious to all but her own comfort. Pémptos watched the cat from his chair, considering. Was Méli like that? No regard for anything besides herself? If so, where had he gone wrong?
He had indulged her at every turn. He knew that. And maybe that is what he had done wrong, trying to constantly please her. He wondered if he could rectify his mistake. It couldn’t be too late already, could it?
And so he made another error. He became strict which only increased her rebelliousness.
They argued. She took to wandering the hills alone and upon her return, Pémptos berated her. He, who had spent the day worried sick about her alone out there where anything could happen, criticized and shouted at her when she came back. He loved her more than his life, but treated her with a harshness she didn’t understand or care to understand anymore.
His beautiful gift from heaven became a willful, headstrong girl who threw tantrums when she didn’t get what she wanted. She outgrew him in intellect and acumen, had questions he didn’t know the answers to. She quit asking them and didn’t listen to what he did try to teach her. They grew more estranged with each passing year.
Both longed for peace between them. They belonged to one another. Wasn’t that enough? Why wasn’t the love strong enough to restore peace?
Another winter passed, the fifth one since she came. Méli’s body was changing. She had grown quite tall. Her head came up to Pémptos’ chin now. The long winter’s freezing weather had drawn them closer from necessity. They had huddled near the hearth, telling each other stories they knew or made up in the moment. Singing. The ice between them began to melt.
Finally, spring thawed the world. The hills turned green with silken grass and flowers bloomed. Méli ran joyfully through the countryside like Atalanta. Pémptos tilled the earth by hand as he had for half a century. He put in the seeds he had saved from last year, one by one, thanking all the gods but Demeter especially for her provision. She had a daughter too, a daughter who had been freed from Hades and brought warmth back with her. Pémptos mused on the raising of daughters and plants while birds filled the air with music. It was good to be alive on a day like this.
A month later, Pémptos and Méli were walking to Athens. Méli wanted more books. That was a good enough excuse to get out on the road and enjoy the glorious April weather.
There was a bridge over the river that had been there hundreds of years. She jumped up on the railing and walked along the edge.
Before considering his words, Pémptos snapped instinctively, “Méli, get down from there.”
She ignored him and kept walking. She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other along the narrow edge. The canyon was deep and the river was high, rushing along from the snowmelt and recent rainstorms.
Méli sang a little tune to herself as she walked along the parapet. It was one of the songs she’d made up a few years ago. “Joy begins and ends with you, I never found a love so true, my heart might burst, you’re always first, my little love, so sweet.” She had sung it to her cat. But Pémptos had always liked the song, because that is how he felt about her.
He walked close by her side as she went along the ledge. He wanted to reach out and grab her and pull her down. He remembered his days as a warrior. He could throw a spear fifty feet with perfect accuracy and enough force to fell a man. Now his arm had withered and he could barely lift hay on his fork for the goat. He watched his feet as they hit the stones of the bridge. They were more than halfway across. Could he grab her and pull her down? She would pull away by reflex and maybe fall. He shouldn’t risk it.
Her little song ended and she stopped walking.
“Papa,” she said. She hardly ever called him that anymore. He looked up. The sun was shining behind her, lighting up her hair in gold. She looked down into his face. “Thank you for taking me to Athens.”
“Will you please come down from there, Méli?”
“In a minute, Papa.” She smiled and resumed walking. “I am almost there. Just a few more steps.”
They were almost across the bridge. She focused her attention on the end. And then a rock shifted beneath her feet.
Time had compassion, paused, and stood still.
Their eyes met.
Then panic and horror as time moved forward again and Méli fell screaming, reaching back, into the rushing water as Pémptos leaned over the rail too late to save her.
He started running, his old heart stirring his blood through his veins, his lungs gasping for air. He ran across the bridge and down the embankment, falling through the brush, slipping on stones, scraping his face, twisting his ankle, tearing his clothing. “Méli!” he shouted over and over again. She had screamed as she fell, and he had heard nothing after. The only sound was the rushing water and his own cracked voice. “Méli!” His call echoed off the embankment. He scrambled along the water’s edge. He waded in, the current nearly knocking him off his feet. “Méli,” he sobbed as he fought with the water.
And then he saw her.
The water had carried her to a small pool at the side, a still, quiet place against the current of the river. Branches grew overhead draped with vine. Mossy rocks framed the pool. “Méli,” he whispered. He picked her up from the water.
He picked up her body. She was gone.
Her head hung back, neck broken. He sat down in the cold pool of water and cradled her in his arms. “My child. Méli. I lost you. I lost you,” he sobbed. “Why wouldn’t you listen?”
He poured out his anguish as he held her to him. “You are my life, my love, my heart. I lost you.” He sat there grieving and grew cold, holding the body of his beloved daughter tight to his chest.
Pémptos’ heart did not burst. He survived the day. He couldn’t carry her up the steep embankment. Some land beside the pool was nearly flat. He scraped away as much dirt as he could. It was a shallow grave. He wrapped her body in his cloak and laid her down. He spent hours moving mossy rocks from the pool to cover her. He wished he was dead. He should have jumped off the bridge after her. But he hadn’t, and now he had to bury his child in a shallow grave along the riverside where she would probably be washed away in the next flood.
Coldness filled his heart. It pumped blood, but love no longer flowed. She had taken all of his love with him. The love he hadn’t even known he carried until she came along. And now she was gone.
Why wouldn’t she listen?

Pémptos spent the night by the river. In the morning, he climbed up the embankment slowly. He paused as he crossed the bridge. He could see downriver the little pool where he had found her and the trees he had buried her under. The light on the water shone brightly. The river never stopped, kept running whether he was sane or mad, content or miserable, healthy or ill. It had no mercy for his heartbreak. No pause for his grief. Life was the same as the river, whether he wanted to live it or not. Why wouldn’t she listen?
As he had worked yesterday, Pémptos had felt his heart grow cold, freeze over, turn to ice, then turn to stone. Like the legends said, when a man turned to stone, there was no life left. This is how he would be from now on. A dead man, made of stone.
He had spent many hours teaching her, but he had failed to teach her the one thing that would have saved her. To listen.

Union

How do I explain to her what happened? How do I tell her she brought my heart to life? But that I didn’t want it to be alive. I liked it dead. I didn’t want to feel or love or be loved. Because I had gone through the death before and I didn’t think I could ever go through it again
That when I met her, I knew. Pain was inevitable. Unavoidable. Destined.
So I lied.
I lied to her. I lied to myself. I lied to myself. I lied to her. Over and over and over again, every day.
I told myself it was not love.
I don’t believe in love.
I can’t.
If I don’t believe in it, I can’t feel it. I cannot be hurt by it. I can live within my guarded walls and survive. The siege of the world will not break me.
Yet from the moment I met her part of me knew all of this was untrue. The way I had lived my life for decades was no longer sustainable.
I was in the doorway to Cristina’s gallery and the activation occurred like a defibrillator jumpstarting my heart. The culpo di fulmine, the lighting bolt, Jove’s power. My heart start beating again.
Until the fear set in. We had that beautiful night together, like nothing I had experienced before.
I said I liked to see behind people’s masks, made that my life’s work. And every time I stripped one of theirs away, I added a layer to mine. Very selfish and cruel.
Buried so deep under the layers of defense, I could barely sense who I am. I wrapped myself in my identity as man, Roman, photographer. Wealth. Property. Womanizer. I moved from one aspect to the next, constantly running from myself like almost every other person on the planet. Living off distractions and obligations.
When she climbed into my lap in the kitchen the morning after our beautiful night, I knew. This was the love of my life. She was what was written on my heart.
I had done that once, as a drunken kid. I was eighteen years old. Loaded, my friends and I went to a tattoo parlor on Via della Scala. Gianni wanted a skull, Marcello wanted some tribal ink. I didn’t know what I wanted. The woman showed me a book of designs. I didn’t like anything. I picked up a pen and drew on some paper. An M with an X through it. Right over my heart. I never knew why I chose that, what it meant.
It was my defense against love.
When I trace back in this life, there is pain from very young. Parents fighting, yelling, hitting. Little me in the shadow of a corner hiding. Their divorce. The instability that followed. Feeling unwanted, sad, and scared.
But I grew. I had strong friendships and all of us had parents with problems. Society was in upheaval. No one knew what normal was anymore. The television showed us so-called happy families, but even they had a problem to solve every half hour. My friends and I roamed the streets after school and invented our own world in which we were kings. Girls were prey to be hunted. Even at a young age, twelve or so, I thought this way. Not to fuck them. But to get them to show an interest in me. Then I would move on to the next. As I got older, it was absolutely to fuck them. I would zero in on one, lure her to me, get her to fuck me, then release her. So did all of my friends. This is what we did.
I suppose I loved my friends. But there was also rivalry and violence. We would constantly tear at each other like a pack of wolves. I don’t know if I loved them. We were all part of each other’s lives and that’s the way it was. Yes, we were a pack of wolves.
Then the question, how to make a living? And I got lucky. All of the competition with my friends growing up put me in the position of knowing how to claw my way to the top without breaking a sweat or messing up my hair. I could still look cool. People respond to this. And I was able see through their bullshit.
So I made money, bought a big house. Went through more women. As soon as one got too close—in her heart, never mine—it was time for the next. And then I reached my forties.
I never had an interest in having a wife or family, I suppose as a form of rebellion against my own childhood and the structure of Italian society in general. So what in the hell did I need love for?
But I did embrace the idea of spirit. This is what I was constantly searching for beneath the masks of my portrait subjects. The essence, the spirit that resides within. I reject religion. But I believe in something. I don’t think there is nothing. Nothing makes no sense to me. Because we are here. And the design is evident.
In everything.
So it must be in us.
In me.
Then I met her.
I have been forced to peel back the layers, discard my masks, look into my shadows, uncover my own naked truth inside, and reflect. I run and run, but there is nowhere to go. Wherever I go, there I am. I cannot run from myself any longer.
I feel the past. The pain of other lives. I know I have been here before. On this planet, in Rome. I hid from that too, the knowledge. But one gloomy September day in the Portico d’Ottavia, I stopped running, stopped hiding. Gathering my courage, I planted my boots into the stones of the past. I said to whatever is out there all right, I am ready to face you, whatever you are, whatever I am. I waited. I stood there knowing I had been there before. And the memories started coming. Time unraveled to the beginning of me, this code. I sensed when my heart died when she fell off the bridge. The hardness I carried inside stemmed from that moment. There was the unacknowledged desire for revenge for the pain she caused me. Then attempts at reconciliation that ended in disaster. The dead heart I carried in every life. Had I learned nothing?
I had learned nothing. But now I know. Now the lessons I had avoided downloaded at once. And now I know. There is a big difference between letting go and letting yourself go. And I have not been doing either well. I have held on to the pain, unwilling to trust, to love, to trust to love for restoration. Now I wonder if it is too late in this life, if the pain I caused her is too much to overcome. She loved me, and I rejected that love completely.
She had written to me once, “All you are with all I am.”
I wonder if that is true. When I see her in New York, I am not sure. She seems different. Closed. Complete within herself. She looks so beautiful, stronger in every way than when I last saw her, physically, mentally, emotionally. As if she’s been through something. And I suppose she has.
She doesn’t message me all week. I try not to think about her as I work my assignment. But I feel her. I feel her within the radius of where I am pulling me like a magnet. I check my phone. Still nothing. Perhaps—
Perhaps I will finally reach out to her.
I look at her picture on her Telegram profile, so divinely beautiful. I am a fool. But I am reconciled to that fact, as the whole thing is only a cosmic joke. We exist only for entertainment. And we, the jesters, the fools, have chosen this path. We have come to play the game.
Breaking all the rules I made myself, I push the camera icon. Meli answers. We look into each other’s eyes through the screen. But this screen thins into nothing. And we are one.

The Source

Yang and I are together again, monad, unit. We have completed our soul’s evolution. Rebellion, wickedness, pride, lust, idolatry, violence, and fear have been faced and conquered. We have discovered our purpose and fulfilled our mission within the matrix as we experienced it. We have learned unconditional love for all, including within.
We are whole.
We float toward the Source where we will rejoin the liquid gold elixir.
Our entire soul experience is one bubble of carbonation in a glass of champagne being held by a woman on a Sunday afternoon. She is wearing a straw hat and sunflower-printed sundress, looking at the rainbow refracted inside a bottle of Acqua Panna.
In her eyes was her age, the timeless complete wisdom of a million years of past lives, of knowledge deeper and more true than any other.