She’d bought a black leather jacket from a stall on the Ponte Vecchio.
The yellow light of the stones gleamed on the river
as she slipped her pale arms into the sleeves, wrapping herself in the animal skin.
We lingered over linguine Alfredo and stopped off for a last gelato,
walking the long way back, only to find our bags
packed and stored behind the hotel desk.
With my blundering Italian, it seemed I’d booked our room for only one night.
They were terribly sorry but it was a holiday, a delirium of people crowding the city,
and though they called other hotels, there was no room at any inn.
When we asked if we could sleep in the lobby, they hesitated
and then they said they had—it wasn’t really a room—but there was a bed.
And they led us along a labyrinth of hallways up and down a maze of stairs—
a route so elaborate we wondered how we’d ever find our way back—
to four walls that rose up within other walls deep in the heart
of the heart of the building. A tiny chamber
with no windows, no space even to open our bags.
But the bed—so strangely ordinary—was made with clean sheets
and a thin coverlet as if it had been waiting there—
maybe for centuries—for us to arrive.
The darkness was absolute—not a glint of light
from outside, no street lamps or headlights,
no stars or moon to push time forward.
No sound of voices, horns, tires. Not a dog barking
or a feral cat knocking the lid off the garbage.
Not a leaf rustling toward autumn. Or a mosquito whispering.
Not the suicidal wings of a moth against flame.
There was no flame. Nor any pebble
clattering down the medieval stones, plinking into the tea- colored water.
What are the names of the nights when you regret nothing?
When the sorrows that came before and the sorrows
that would come after part
like a stream parts when it bends around a rock.
There’s nothing I left behind of that night.
Not the smell of the leather that enveloped her,
not the ochre reflections of the buildings, their narrow balconies
rippling in the water, not the darkness that held us becalmed
as though the universe granted us one night of reprieve
from its endless cycles of birth and death.
We were young. Even I was young. And we laughed
at our good luck and slept.