Nightshade Blossoms
(Written 1998)
Twenty-five days. It has been twenty-five days exactly since I have heard her voice, twenty-nine days since I have seen her face. The first minutes, hours and even days had been the easiest, of course. The bliss from our weeks together had been like the emotional euphoria from a thousand holidays wrapped into those briefest of moments that we had shared. The emotions had inevitable outlasted her presence, her essence outlasting her touch. After she left, flown away like some dove that belonged not on this undeserving Earth, had departed on the southern winds to some home more magical, more deserving. It is unfortunate that as a part of this world, I am equally undeserving of her, a fact that may not have been entirely lost on her.
However powerful the emotions may have been, their ardor could not last forever. Now they are but a series of confused, vague memories that cloud my mind and serve to haunt me rather than comfort me. Ostensibly, I find no comfort in them, and have no control over their occurrences. When they come, as they do with increasing frequency and intensity, they tempt me at first, like the petals of the beautiful nightshade.
Invariably, I fall. Like the sirens of Greek legend, they sing to me, hypnotizing me. It is only when they collapse into the flower’s embrace is its deadly nature revealed. By then, it is too late. I let them take me, if I may find peace from her at last. They leave me, rather than take me, and leave me when they have had their fill. Only after they have fed their vulgar selves on the things I hold sacred do they leave me, alone.
Even when the memories do not plague me, and I am coolly sober and safe from their touch, my weakness is evident, as I find that I can no longer even say her name. I think it constantly, and it is never far from my lips, though I lack the strength to say it. It is as if it is some superstition, that if I may speak her name, I will be invoking something powerful and eternal. The essence of her. She has become her; she, the woman; a powerful and invisible absolute. To all appearances I have my feet firmly on solid ground, but in reality I float. I do not fly like a bird, free in a glory that is all its own, but rather like a kite. An empty, hollow shell, tethered only to a memory of a woman lost.
She left my world. The world is now pale, like a dimmed and dying sun, made so by sharp contrast to the brilliance with which she once illuminated my life.
However brief that glory may have been.
