Of Dust and Light

Recognized

Brancaleone Superiore, Calabria

I lived on the coast, about five kilometers away, but I kept coming back. Each climb shifted something.

A cat watched me from a broken window, tail flicking, unimpressed. Maybe it recognized me.

Interior of the Armenian cave church in Brancaleone Superiore, Calabria, with rough stone walls, a central pillar, and natural light streaming through the doorway into the dim chamber.

Goat bells echoed off the walls. An old man once told me, amused, “We kept livestock in here.”

The air smelled of damp stone.
Sunlight slid along the wall and caught me in the frame.

Silhouette of a photographer projected in vivid orange light on the rough stone wall of an Armenian cave church in Brancaleone Superiore, Calabria, surrounded by dark rock pillars and shadows.