Black Swan

I saw you … high … atop the promontory spinning with manic madness pirouettes et fouetté lost in yourself - in movement … your upper back split, low and, I swear - feathers … peeking … tucked under your shoulder blades splayed and black as black (obsidian … cespitose) I had to strain to see your eyes but I could … just … drowned in ink - not a shard of white showing like a mountain pool at midnite (how I longed to swim it) sans the salvation of stars … or lucidity. I was spellbound - never had I beheld such intensity such wild wonder … crying, the ferocity of your spirals flung your eyes’ oily issue outward and whatever it struck was turned to ruin - the intent of your weep, a bloody acid (how I ached to feel its burn) … the clouds above you growled broken here-and-there where the moon flashed its beams to burnish you ocean brume below swirling upward as if your brutal ballet had sway over ALL - as if your kicking legs gave tempo to time itself your delirium, deign to greet the gods … (or destroy them) … each whirl made the surf beneath you more angry turned the clouds darker the moon, more harsh and red each snap of your foot made you harder to see the blur of your body like thin tapestry flapping in a gale … (how I wished it wrap me) … I wanted you … more than I’d ever wanted anyone or any thing … more than starvation more than unsated thirst and the more ferocious your dance the deeper my core burned for the feel of your flesh … the more intense your spins the angrier the surf and the louder it’s roar - ‘til it reached a level so cacophonous that I had to cover my ears … yet my bones still rattled - my marrow melting with the motion of your twirls now nothing but a blur of color - a mad mashup of dazzling kinetics with no semblance left of limbs, torso or body - no hint at all of a shape, human (how I craved that chaos) … and when I was sure my mind and ears and eyes could take no more - when I felt myself losing consciousness - reality slipping into the mists … it all … STOPPED … your dance the roar the clouds the surf … everything … calm, peaceful, smooth as glass from a rage of incomparable fury and force to a heavenly stillness in but a moment … clouds gone - sea as smooth as satin and a soft cornflower moon painting all with its tender bloom (how I melted, meandering) … slowly, by grace my senses were returning and when my aching eyes could finally focus, I saw that you … were GONE … and my breath followed … stunned, I looked immediately to the rocky trail that led from the ledges, down scanning its entire snaking length - but … nothing … I searched the water’s mirror surface then walked to the edge and peered intently into the depths - not a thing … anywhere … I bent my ears to the quietude for a sound of you - ANY sound … but … complete silence … hurriedly, I climbed the stony path up to the promontory legs racing, heart racing … mind racing thinking that it all MUST have been a crazy dream - that your dance, the storm, that NIGHT - was something I would soon be waking from … but … I never awoke it was no dream and when I finally reached the top of the bluff, gasping creeping toward its edge (terrified of what I wouldn’t find) all that remained there … was the pink ribbon from your hair - the ribbon I had given you in youth - the very last time we had seen each other all those many years ago when, as teens, we had found love - love and passion, pure and the callow merging of flesh - here … on these very sands … where I had now found you AND lost you … all over again.