“
Now reading
La Tempesta
Like an ancient bend reclaimed by the river, the absence of fear is filled with its own memory: the time you were carried trembling up steps to a landing to wait out a storm, your mother soothing you with stories, her hold serene as Giorgione's madonna who nurses her child against a raging background, the muted facade of a town flashed into life, clouds thundering grey-green across what seems no end of a night torn by lightning. Your mother's face illumined as you lean to her warmth, even then slight, and cooling as the seconds shut down. The stairwell, a darkness you imagine pouring through windows and doors that won't close, your feet mired as time thunders closer, chasing you back into nightmares that sometimes wake true. You, the loss of all you've owned, recover the memory of mother and child as if coming home, as if love lies where it was always pictured, in the calm of the storm. Even when love lies, it's the dream you cling to.