Snapshots of a metamorphoses

I remember the sunshine on the back of my head, warming each strand of hair to a warm gold and crisping my forearms. The morning was filled with cold, clean air- hardly any cars around to tinge the air with exhaust typically found at sidewalk cafes.
I don't speak Italian, but that didn't stop me from trying.
As I finished my cigarette (well, not mine, not really) the proprietor came out to talk to me, and took my order. Mostly we smiled and spoke with our faces, supplemented with broken exchanges of words. I handed over the requisite blue euro note and slung the ribbed coin into my pocket. I thought about buying a chocolate bar.
Others from our group drifted through the square in search of castles, clothes, and compliments. Other groups drifted through the square speaking English and thinking that we couldn't understand them. We smiled.
The shop keeper brought me a cappuccino in a white coffee mug with a slender saucer and a small silver spoon. I smiled at her again and she smiled at me, and I took a sip of unsweetened cappuccino like it was made out of the last joy and hope in the world. Her smile broadened at the sight of untouched sugar packets, and then she ducked back into the blue door of the tiny cafe, leaving us to sit in amicable silence at the green, outdoor table.
Occasionally one of us would speak, softly, to point out what the other may have missed. Mostly we just enjoyed being alive, being young, being in a foreign country, being alone. Gradually, we woke up.
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The streets of Firenze were nearly empty as we tried to find our way back to the hotel, a chain of people tied with the responsibility to protect and to love one another. It was so dark, so clear outside, and the bricks of the neighboring walls had felt the caresses of so many previous generations. I ran my fingertips over their edges, wondering at the atoms that I was dislodging and carrying with me, amazed that my cells were remaining on a wall, tracing my path through the city.
I slipped my small hand into your large one, and I felt safe. Your stride was too long, and I had to take a step and a skip for each pace, but I didn't mind.
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The font at St. Paul's basilica crushes the most beautiful marble devil I've ever seen. Fascinated, I caressed the fallen angel's curls. My fingers caught and twisted along the marble strands. He's usually not so beautiful. His face, twisted in the disbelief of betrayal and pain, seemed so incongruent with our traditional view. The monks of the basilica raised their voices in harmony from the room just down the hall, their song slipping the edges and tweaking the soul as I sat and let this statue talk to me. It made me want to cry.
Across the room, the group went down by twos and threes to pray at St. Paul's tomb. The stairway was covered in hush, the bench itself full of a sacred energy that I hadn't realized existed before contact. I asked to know how to pray. I prayed to believe. I hoped that I would find a change in myself. I found my demons. I looked them in the eye.
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At two o'clock in the morning, I reached out for comfort on a secret balcony in Roma. My face was streaked with tears as I struggled to justify a belief in this God that I wasn't even sure existed. Prior to that moment, I wasn't sure there was a point. Even if there was something out there, it certainly didn't care about me.
I was more than half a bottle of wine down, dejected from the closed door downstairs and trying to justify the lack of emotion as a solution to interpersonal exchange-- but:
I heard you say that I mattered. I heard you say that I could change the world.
and
I believed you.