Walking with Beatrice

Roshni Ahuja / V Mag at UVA

“Dante knowingly invests Beatrice with all that is good and wise and pure so that he can strive towards that… [she] gives voice to his inner life.” – Kiki Petrosino

In an autumn vignette of collegiate romance

we walk from lecture to lunch on wednesdays

beneath a whispered dance of leaves ablaze

with the yellow intensity I find when I glance 

at her clutching a cup of caramel cold-brew 

with arms swathed in a gentle pine green wool

knit into the grassy hill down which I would roll

as a child and then rest, lying under the sky’s blue 

heart racing, watching the clouds arrange into fate,

fluid fragments of us floating beyond the present. 

Out of this wind-shaped white, I search for intent 

when I wish I would breathe in the breeze and wait 

for the clouds to clear, to feel the warmth of the sun,

and see her in the light before morning makes us one.