Her eyes glinted. They were dark fire. Her hair, like swirls of night, flowed down her arm. The hint of a smile was the breaking dawn.  

My body shook, breathing ragged. I clenched my fists, fighting desperately against madness. She played. I resisted. My lips pursed.

Three years ago I had lost. That voice, once loud and sharp, had played gentle chords. The memory was a persistent echo. It pierced. The dam was about to burst. Again.

She had become a spell, that time, enveloped me like a mist, lifted me into a fantasy, and let me drop. I crashed like glass on floor.

Not again; but I couldn't. She was magnetic. She was transcendence. My heart surged, like a moth to a flame.

Enough! In two steps, I obliterated the space between us and tore the canvas into half. Then another, and another...

Pieces of paper lay strewn upon the floor. Suddenly I was alone. I gasped. My eyes closed. The pain cut in like a knife.

She looked up to the towering evergreen and wondered if the paradoxical romance was yet to begin again. She hadn't given up, was it the rolling synapses that captured her heart or the lonely thoughts? And would she ever know? Was she meant to? Scouring her brain for the reckoning, imaging his cynical gaze meeting her own,that sudden illumination it dawned, and capturing smile that followed. Retrospective Love uncertain. Only one truth lingered: his brain was the one she craved another chance to explore. A sleepy afternoon to lead him down the rabbit hole once more. A Crow materialized in the branches of the lush tower above.Would it become a ******?

Yesterday she was nowhere to be found
In the earth or under the earth.


Suddenly she is all here - a bright soon
Of a tomorrow in earnest and potluck joy, embers and pyres, iris and the merriment of ochre.


A star groomed by outer space - spilling wet ash
And fissured out by the tailored saw of the wood.
Now something is stirring in the smolder.
We call it a girl.


Still wowed.
She has no idea where she is.


Her eyes, chalcedony stones, explore ripening doomsday and an ivory moon rock.
Is this the world?
It confuses her. It is a great numbness.


She pulls herself together, rousing to the new weight of things
And to that maternal figure nuzzling her, and to her down burrow.


She rests
From the first infinite shock of light, the empty laze
Of the curious and their curious questions -
What has happened? What am I?


Her ears keep on inquiring, blissfully.


But her legs are impatient,
Mending from so long nothingnesses
Her tiny hands are restless with ideas, they start to try a few out,
Swaying this way and that,
Grasping for balance, learning fast -


And she's suddenly upright


And stretching - a giant hand
Strokes her from top to toe
Perfecting her outline, as she tightens
The knot of herself.
Now she comes to -
Bold, beautiful - Argentina
Over the weird world. Her nose
crimson and magnetic, draws her, consciously sounding,
A petite yaff, aimed towards her mother. And the world is warm
And gentle and softens her daze. Touch by touch
Everything fits her together.


Soon she'll almost be a woman.
She wants to be a Woman,
Pretending each day more and more Woman
Till she's the perfect Woman. The immortal Woman
Will surge through her, weightless, unbound, a twirling flame
Beneath silver gusts,


It will coil her eyeballs and her heels
In a single outlaw fright - like the awe
Between mortar and firework.


And curve her neck, like a crocodile emerging from the placid pond
Among lilies,
And fling the new moons over her shimmery banner,
All the full moons and the dark moons.
Booming, ineffable delight.