*

Stanza, in Italian, means “room”. 

In writing poems, we create small rooms of insight, we collect and arrange phrases like pieces of furniture. A vintage saying, a rhyming loveseat. With enough rooms it is possible to create a poem worth living in; something warm and spacious, inviting and eclectic. 

Sit in this room with me and perhaps you will understand what I mean. 

*

I met Giulio mid-blizzard. It was the heaviest snowfall of the winter that year, and I had woken to the whiteness sure that he would call off our planned coffee. When he texted instead that he was still game, I thought, why not? 

Coffee had turned into a very cold stroll, had turned into snowball making, and hours later we found ourselves soaked and hungry and in need of shelter, so we shuffled into the small italian restaurant on my street, shaking off the snow as we went. 

Inside there was only one other customer, and we were seated a table over from him. The man was older, with tender wrinkles around his eyes. He wore a knit sweater and a painter’s hat and was finishing the last bites of his pasta. When the waiter came to clear his plate, the two exchanged a few words in Italian, and I noticed Giulio’s eyes flicker in their direction. 

As the waiter strode away, Giulio leaned over towards the old man and - from what I gathered with my little Italian familiarity- introduced himself and asked where he was from. I caught a mention of Rome, of California, of years here and there. The man seemed thrilled to share his mother-tongue with a stranger and the conversation skipped forward easily. 

For the first minute I tried to follow along; I narrowed my eyes as if the words and threads of conversation might materialize in the airspace between them. As the tempo and gusto of the exchange rose however, I was quickly lost, and leaned back in my chair letting the sounds wash over me like a dense current. I still enjoyed listening - I found pleasure in the rise and fall of the syllables, in the unfamiliar animation of each phrase. I was charmed, infatuated, aroused even, and yet – despite being seated across the table from Giulio– so very far away. I felt as though, had I tried to reach out to him, I would never have made contact. As if an imperceptible barrier had emerged between us that I could not cross. Perhaps I never would. 

*

My mother says that the most tragic Disney princess is not abused Cinderella, or Stockholm syndrome Belle, or even underage and racially profiled Pocahontas, but Ariel - who gives up her voice for love. 

I want you to know, if you ever read this, there was a time when I would rather have had you by my side than any one of these words; I would rather have had you by my side than all the blue in the world. - Maggie Nelson, Bluets 

I, too, would give up my words for you. In the empty moments of the evening, I collect them– in quiet piles of my mind– letters and words and phrases that I am willing to lose. 

Maybe not: Sidles, Crepuscular, Francesca, Dromedary, Litotes, Evergreen, Petrichor, Kerfuffle, Discombobulated, Arboreal, Tchotchke.

But the rest (perhaps) I could do without. 

I try to imagine a world without words. Can I love without the language to explain it? I think about the notes that I write you – too often now – professing thoughts and feelings that I know I would never get right in conversation. Would my love still be known to you without them? 

*

Early in our relationship, we are sitting on the couch together - I, reading, he, working– and I come across a passage that is so beautiful, I feel it tugging against my vocal chords, begging to be voiced, to be shared. 

Listen to this, I say. 

As I read I can tell he is listening, but only somewhat. I can sense his eyes pulling back towards his computer. He does not move, but I feel him leaning away. When I finish he nods his head. “Nice”, he says. And returns to coding. 

But the words! I want to yell. The language! How it fits together in perfect imprecision. How the consonants clatter against one another on the stairs to understanding. Hear the echo of each step receding into the next sentence. Feel the end move forward like a breeze. Can’t you see it? 

But I return quietly to the page, knowing the ecstasy is my own. 

*

I realize one day that he simply cannot express language the way I want him to. The scripts I write for him do not exist in his head. They are a great fallacy; a willful projection of the way I express my own feelings. To wish this onto him is to wish that the fabric of his mind stitched together in an entirely different pattern. This is not what I wish. 

Instead, I have to learn to see love in other ways. In the sunflowers on my kitchen counter after a long day, in the attentive conversations while strolling museums, in the eye contact, the hand grasps, the gestures. 

*

When Giulio suggests I read one of his favorite books, I’m more than game – of course– but skeptical. Giulio reads books about business and entrepreneurship; books that instruct and teach about specific topics using logical, overt language. Though I’m always interested to know what he’s learning, I worry that the writing will pain me. That it will leave my abstract ever-searching soul hungry. 

But of course, I read it. And I am shocked to discover that every line oozes Giulio. I see him on the page, I recognize patterns of his thinking and the roots of his assertions. In reading, I understand him better than I ever have before. Something clicks. I hear things he has told me within the text, I watch the words pull into focus the self he has worked so hard to create– the self he wishes to be. 

I begin to think that we are not so different after all. 

*

There is an entry in my journal from the 6th of March. I have no memory of that day. The line reads: 

I cannot write today. I want simply to be happy without it. 

*

To write is an affliction. To love, is also. 

*

I loved language first- learned to make love in the pages of old books, between the warm protection of their covers. Infatuated by their scent, the texture of their skin-pages, the way the binding came together at the seams, I wove myself into the arm-sphere of their words. I succumbed to the rhythm of the sentences, the feeling of the phrases as they brushed against my cheek in the night. This was all I knew of intimacy. Words that tilted my face in the direction of beauty. It is all there, they said, you just have to look. 

*

I am trying to write about something other than him. What else is there to say?

There are winter-almost mornings, when the air is cold and presses upon the blanket like an ocean over the sea floor. I crinkle my toes into their own warmth like a sea star stretching its scaly arms. 

There is the rising sun, which landed so delicately on my desk this morning, I thought perhaps it was an apparition. 

There is the color pink. Pale pink like my poufs and my desk chair in the texture like bristled thought that continues, somehow, to evade falling coffee and tears. 

(tears about something other than him) (and the fear of losing him) 

But, I’ve failed already. 

*

Tuesday morning he leans over me sleepily in bed, drawing near to the thin segment of skin behind my ears. He says, “Can we just stay in love forever?”

How do I write that? Already, on the page, it seems wrong. I have abused the moment in my attempt to fit it into these obscure sockets of sound. It is no longer impenetrable, no longer my own. 

*

He and I, in this little room of the language that rolls off his tongue like marbles down the run and clacks and rushes and swirls through the curving pieces of my consciousness. When he speaks to the waiters in our Italian restaurants, the words leap from his lips as dancers in an opening act. They are excited by the wide air– the pockets of breeze upon which to bounce and glide. I wish to hold them, to dissect them in the infirm grasp of my hand; to see the world of his

language from the inside out. 

*

It is an early spring evening. Some of Giulio’s friends are visiting and we are gathered around his living room, sipping wine and picking at crackers and fresh parmesan. 

I am careful with myself. I laugh at the right moments and ask attentive questions. I try hard to please. When someone asks what I do for work, I explain quickly that “ - well - I’m still in school and internships and nannying and working here and there and so on”. As I’m trying to turn the conversation back to someone else Giulio pipes in. 

“She’s a writer though,” he explains, “she wants to write. She’s gotten things published. Soph’s a really incredible writer.” He looks at me and smiles. I have never heard him talk about me in this way. 

My face is visibly flushed but I don’t mind. I nod my head and probably say something coy and someone else picks up a new thought and the conversation is on its way again around the next corner of inquisition. 

But they’ve left me behind; I forget to listen. Instead, I hear his words again and again in my head. An incredible writer. I look at him and something has changed. I want to hold him into infinite. To watch the lines of his face deepen with age. To count our love in cups of black coffee and books about business and quiet moments setting the table. I want to run my words dry with him beside me. 

For the rest of the night his voice plays in my head and I feel sated in joy and recognition.  

*

When his mother comes from Rome to visit us in the city I am plagued by my inability to communicate with her. She speaks Italian, and can manage only a few basic phrases in English. We are both eager to connect, but the barrier is great. The cavern of space between us is wide, it collects unspoken thoughts and attempted translations in piles of miscommunication.   

I try to make up for my lack of language through my body. I smile too much. Nod overenthusiastically. I hope she will notice the love in my eyes when I look at her son, the way we move in smooth synchronicity about the space, the ease with which we collaborate setting up a dinner, cleaning the table, rearranging the furniture. 

Towards the end of the stay she embarks on a rather large art project in the living room and employs me to help. I fetch tools and odd necessities; crouch next to her to observe and admire the process. At one point she grabs my hands and places them on the canvas, guiding my fingers through the correct motion. Together, we pull a shape into being. Two large white canvases with facing, asymmetrical arks, which – when put together – create a kind of imperfect circle. My hands are dirty and my hair has fallen out of place and I hold them up and say “bellissima!” and she smiles like I have not seen her before. 

She explains - through translation - that one is for Giulio and one is for me. Later, I discover a note taped on the back of mine. 

Quando due metà trovano la perfetta corrispondenza, nasce qualcosa di unico e voi lo siete..

“When two halves find the perfect match, something unique is born. That’s what you two are.”

*

Everything I write turns into a love letter. It’s gross. My words stumble around their subjects. They fight to find him in the obscurities of everyday. The way the dogs bound gleefully between each other in the park, their ears flopping in silent reverie, tender curls like his own that move with wild joy. 

*

The first time I send Giulio a poem, I worry that I have revealed too much of myself. It is not something I wrote, just something I found. “A love letter that ends at popeyes” it is called. I hope at least the title will make him smile, even if he doesn’t understand that the salty velvet gold of fried chicken is the same gold of our love and that, I, like Destiny O. Birdsong, do not want lockets and daffodils and strings of inlaid pearls and that it - we- are good & filling & enough. 

I tell him it made me think of him. When I ask about it later, he says - carefully, with one eye on the words as they exit his mouth - that he thought the spacing was interesting. 

I smile wide. That is good & filling & enough for me.