It was a tepid night in Maranello, Italy. A night that contrasted another in exquisite detail.
I no longer called any place home except for the heart I had found an eternal home in. I had found a home that goes beyond road and soil. A home that went beyond brick and mortar. This home resided inside of a woman that I have the honor to call mine.
A woman, mine, who was eager to get to the witch’s tower, Torre della Strega. The woman who, with an excitement that reminded me of a youth I had never known, squeezed my hand as I led her to the room where I had first touched love.
Sì.Touched it as it fluttered around the cobblestone prison, as curious about me as I was of it. Back then, when the scarf, smelling of her scent, her essence in every delicate but strong fiber, caught my attention, it had only been a symbol of what I yearned for.
To love.
To be loved in return.
This symbol had become the beat of my heart. The life in my veins.
It has become her.
Love had turned a symbol of her into my reality.
A woman I couldtouch.
Scent.
See.
Hear.
Taste.
The woman smiling at me in the moonlight, the light caressing the color of her hazel eyes and causing them to shimmer and dance, as it would over glistening water. Her smile was brighter than any room I had ever been in that was filled with the warmth from candlelight; brighter than the moon, even, and in this, I am completely made whole in understanding my brothers and the love and appreciation they feel for their wives.
She ismywife, and she has changed my life completely.
She ismine.
For that moment.
For the day.
For the week.
For the month.
For all the breaths left in my lungs.
For always.
The scarf fluttering through my life that night led me to this moment. It materialized out of thin air. All of my choices, and the direction of my life thereafter, have led me to this second—all from that single moment in time.
My life before her was as contrasting, as polarizing, as the light of the moon is to the darkness.
She is my light.
In the brightest of days.
In the darkest of nights.
My wife, my beautiful song in physical form, touched the scarf I had secured in her hair for the drive to the tower. She knows as well as I do how symbolic it is for both of us. Being in the witch’s tower, her body next to mine, as soft as the fabric, as permanent in my veins as my blood, does something to me I can barely explain in words. The woman I gazed at was as telling as the stars blazing above our heads, as infinite as them, and she burned for me alone.
Her hands caressed the stone, her eyes taking in the scene, and I could tell her breathing had picked up, though we did not have to travel far by foot. Her breathing had picked up because we both realized how connected we were through this place. She was conceived here; for me, it felt as though I took my first breath here, first touched love here, even if I did not know it at the time.
