The Stairs of Rome, Assignment #23

The Stairs to Rome

19

The toddler is kicking my seat; I cannot sleep. Em is nodding in and out between sleep and reading, waking up every hour to slide her pencil across a few pages of Dante in Love before her hand drops off and once again she slumbers. Shel is absorbed in her book, so intensely that my own eyes become weary as if it is I straining to discern each word in the dark. I look for sleep again, but the toddler is still restless. I look at the large screen that maps our progress – the yellow line still tapers off above the Midwest, as it did the previous time I checked. Eight hours to go, before the boarding, before another set of stairs up and down. They have closed all the shutters so that only the neon glow of the screens lifts the blanket of darkness.

I should be sleeping,
Closed shutters affect night.
The toddler still kicks.


20

Amsterdam airport,
Smoke silently fogs the air,
Neither night nor day.

The tapping of laptop keys drones into the background around me. I would join them, but I used up my batteries on the plane. I search for an outlet – but the boxy protrusions on the metallic poles are a mystery. Perhaps I missed it. I crawl around the seats, squinting at each square protrusion on surface. No outlets. Futilely I sink back in my plastic seat – tap, tap, tap. This is one of those inevitable stops in a journey – are there ever any direct routes to foreign lands? Traveling – we are no longer the kings of time, but enslaved.


21

Rome Center. Marble steps. Have I really entered through the same door? Just a second ago I stood before a colossal metal door, sprayed with neon hues of pink, orange, blue traced in illegible letters; dark green beneath. Now I have crossed to the other side, and a white staircase looms ahead. We all glance back at our bags.

Pile the luggage in the elevator; I will escort. I squeeze behind the metal doors, a book clamped on a shelf. I lose my balance – lucky there is no room to fall. Across the matte tiled floor, a few more steps, through a studio, five more steps – leave the bags.


22

Metal benches, as if a sculptor dismantled our green graffiti-decorated door and folded it into steps. The sun is different in Rome; her wrath bleaches our landscape white.

Roasting tourists, cook
Sweat salted palette, pickled
Perhaps gelato?

A walk to become familiar: four paths at each corner of the Campo de’Fiori. We head for the left path, thinking that it will direct us to the Pantheon. Our gelato is dripping. My head screams for shade, but the heat has made my legs languid, suffering in the beating sun longer. My heels wedge in the cracks between the cobblestones every fifth step – these roads are a climb. There is no one here but tourists – we all have the aimless, destination-less countenances that flag us as strangers. We are in the Campo again….where is Rome hiding her past?


25

Four hours ago we decided to watch a football match. Had we chosen earlier, we would have been seated. But the same climb nevertheless. First a set of stone steps lead into the Stadium, a crowd ahead pushing against the railing that separates the bottom level from the midsection. Contorting to piece through this puzzle, we are invited by a steep mountain of steps. We climb as we did the Colosseum. Shirtless, potbellied Italian men fill the seats, accompanied by their sons. Some college guys stand at the front. They begin to sing the Lazio chant, raising their arms like goalposts during an American football touchdown and clapping every now and then. Even the grandma – I would say she is at least 70 years old, bedecked in baby blue pants, balancing on neon blue wedged sandals, a blue-and-white scarf wrapped about her waist, over a light blue tee that read “100% Lazio” – even she joins the musical wave. Billows of smoke tar our lungs. Looking down I see the cloud looming above, a haze that separates us from the true fans.

Two players go down.
I missed the start, distracted
By smoke and chanting.


28

We sit on the steps watching the sounds of Florence cart by us: vendors in a secret line.

Child laughter, giggling
Wheels jolting on cobblestone
Church bells ringing time.


31

Climbing down the bus steps is even harder than the climb up, for debarking the No. 40 is an uphill swim against a rushing current of boarders. The bus is patient, why the haste? I am overcome by middle-aged women.


91

We wander the small streets of San Gimignano. No one lives here, not even those who work in the central restaurants – purely a town that people pass, a postcard town. We clamber up the tower, a spiral maze of metal grated steps and wooden ladders, to see the town.

Obscurity sinks below,
Light awaits us, clarity.
Observe from above.


97

We climb Italy’s Great Wall; in the distance a town in a snow globe. All of this for a taste of nine-generation old olive oil; I must buy a bottle home. The land around us sinks – a large volcanic cavern as if God’s fingers pushed the landscape down, like an eagle’s talon. The rising dome in the center sprouts the city of Civita.

Muscles strain, quads burn
Skin sizzles, hamstrings tighten
Steeper and steeper.


98

There are no more steps in the heart of Rome, just the flat but quaintly uneven cobblestone roads. If there are more, I will not be unaccustomed to climb. Mopeds zip by me as I slide to the side. I head towards L’Insalata Rica for a healthy portion of noodles. Which path should I take? The secret tunnel beneath the chapel, through the miniature gate? Or perhaps a stroll around the little shops with $5 jeans always on display?

Choices, once unknown
To the casual traveler.
Weaving streets my own.