That summer I had waited for news of your release.
I was so certain you would make your way
back to the valley, home to me. 

Shipwrecks and entanglements notwithstanding,
nor the Greek nor the one who held your pursestrings—
least of all the Holy Roman Empire

Would stand in your way. This is what I would say
when they begged me not to believe in second chances
or made me think choosing you

Meant breaking my vow to him. But that we always shared,
you and I and there was nothing left to lose except to choose
a love that was larger than my life or yours.

Did you know, before you died, that I already had
chosen you. That dream never died. And so when I stood
outside the walls in the place you stood

And wished I could go back in time or make some sense
of a life so full of losses, I saw it all—the story as I would
have written it, the life we might have lived.

And it was beautiful. It was good. And then I blinked
and I was a girl whose knees gave way and stumbled 
walking on those same stones 

Two thousand years in the future, my father's face
before me speaking of our distant story—yours with his words,
mine with his heart—and I was overcome.

With madness some would later say. Or fantasy.
It is all the same to me and means nothing in the light of a love
that cannot be contained by time.

Riveted back to the memory of she who lived in me
and her love for you, one nobody knew or would belive,
I saw her journey on from this cold place that summer.

She—or is it I?—would leave soon after to climb another mountain,
far away on an isle called Patmos to write of how it was
in the beginning for him and in the end

For every one of us, to bid him come quickly and 
do not tarry. But I left one part out of the vision and the story,
which is both fact and allegory. I did not say

That I saw you, too, far in the distance but walking toward me
with the boy, a river of sparkling forgiveness that ran both ways
and became a fleur-d-lis fountain where we met

In the middle of time and with no need for words.
The thought of it now makes me break out in laughter—
that you and I who always wanted the last word

Could have no need for them at all. 
Twelve again in this lifetime, I got up with clear direction
from he who had come as he said he would.

He told me it was time to remember
and to hold these treasures in my heart. Had I known
all the ways that would tear me apart

I would have laughed at him. But his laughter and yours—
they always come back to me and they say one thing
and the same: "There is a way....

There is a way... There is a way, and the gate is narrow.
It is said that so few find it. I wonder if we missed it.
What can I do but wait for news of your release

And pray you remember me and take us
back to Italy or maybe far away and into a better day,
here and now, set free to love again.