Brancaleone Superiore, Calabria

I arrive at sunrise, a red line spreading across the Ionian Sea.

Cicadas start up. Goats climb through the olive trees below the village.

The houses lean into each other up here. Some are ruins now. A cat watches me from a collapsed window, tail flicking. It looks unimpressed, maybe he recognizes me.

I live down on the coast, maybe five kilometers away, but I keep coming back. Every time I climb up here, something shifts. The higher I go, the more everything else falls away — the traffic, the noise, even the sea.

Past the cracked square, a narrow path twists down the cliff. My breath gets loud when I climb the stairs to the cave. I take a short break and pretend it’s intentional.

Inside, it opens into a small church carved from stone. A pillar rises in the center like a tree trunk.
Armenian monks carved it in the 10th century. They came with Byzantine troops fighting the Arabs. They say.

Now goat bells echo off the walls. Once, an old man from the village told me, amused, “We kept our livestock in here.”

The air smells of damp stone.
The sunlight moves along the wall, giving me this glorious selfie.

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