The Song of Psyche

Raindrops on the rooftop
are distracting as I lay awake and wait.
In the slumber of the night, I listen,
marking time,
waiting for the rush of wings to o’er take me

And so I wait each night. For the lover without a face. Who comes to me smelling of mountains, To light with age-old grace. To perch upon my bedside, consume my naked breast. I feel the power of fire… A wave that’s reached its crest.

The hush of night is upon us as he parts the doors of my loins, grasping, sucking, cleaving, He pushes away the thighs of fading resistance… And learns of my most intimate places.

Night after night, he has come to me. Rested curling head upon my heart. Each night he has taken me… lit bonfires in my belly… plumbing the aching barracks of my surrender… hearing my shrieks, breathless in the still of time. Feeling my body wriggle, tense like horses, racing under the sheets. Until the sun rises, passion is spent, and he is gone.

Yet in the glare of cold sunlight, jealous sisters swarm. Carrying rumors wrapped in barbed whispers: monster…. demon….. minotaur: this man without a face.

And so my night is shaken… the earth beneath me burps… and uncertainty gnaws at the folds of my love. And so, this night I come armed against uncertainty, protected against all doubt, and when at last darkness hugs me, this time I am content to wait. Wait through the fever of passion that has long fingers bring spasms of joy, pressed as they are in my womanhood, erect, steadfast… encroaching on the untouched roundness of behind… content to wait as hot honey splashes my inner thighs until, at last, sleep… like a drug, enfolds him.

Then the hot heat of my lantern blazes fast. In the halo of its rays, I see his slumbering form, lift it to see his hidden face… monster… demon…. ….minotaur. It is the face of a god, whose hyacinth locks curl around his slumbering head. Eros. And then, heat, a splash, a smear of hot wax… a startled gasp of pain. A furious look of betrayal. In the echo of the wind, I hear the trace of his departure. He is gone… forever.

Moonlight in the window…
…is distracting as I lay awake and wait
For the lover whose face …too soon seen…
Refuses to come again.
The moonlight in the window
Casts its pallor over me….
It is a shroud of snow