Chapter Nine.

She leaves me stranded in the cold and lonely night, and the wailing winds that twirl around my body mock my willing sacrifice.
Indeed, the winds no longer carry my passionate call to her.
The crushing weight of silence and darkness is all I experience as I endure her absence, for she did not choose my company tonight, and so I sit and lose myself in all the joyful memories of my time with her.
From time to time I look toward my gods with a rebellious stare.
I ask them why they brought her here, to heal the bleeding wounds I bear as a consequence of my sacrifices, if in the end she shall reject the dream we share, the dream we created together.
I see her face in my mind and my anger dissipates into the shadowed skies where I found her spirit, for it is my duty to wait for her with a patient and understanding heart.
Her soul is trapped, her mind is confused, her passion cannot be tamed.
I sit and peruse her beauty with my lonesome spirit, while somewhere in the distant night she lives and makes her memories without me.
Her rejection makes me prideful, for she is no easy star to capture.
Yet she shines for me because I see her light, so I am proud of her; and she smiles for me because I have captured her light, so I adore her.
She calls to me in the late hours of my loneliness, to tell me that her rejection is incomplete, to tell me not to forsake this truth that we share.
When she rejects me, all the woodland creatures share my pain.
They howl and cry and hide beneath the sage bushes, to mourn the separation of their Lord and Lady.
When she rejects me, she dons a veil of brutal discontent for my pursuit.
Her passion goes cold, she denies my touch, her eyes grow distant.
In the dimmed spheres of her faraway eyes, I view the conflict of her thoughts and emotions,
for she is sad, yet she is stubborn.
Her light is gone, our truth denied, my soul is torn, my spirit shaken.
Dismissed, I travel the winding roads, transformed into a dull shadow of all she made me, all she saw in me, all she needs in me.
She rejects me because I force her to reject me, for I am the sun, and I am wise and worthy, and I am the source of projection.
And yet she pushes me to force her rejection, for she is the moon and I am the tides, and she is the source of reflection.
Her conflict is my pain, her presence is my joy, her smile is my quill, the touch of her body my parchment, and her eyes are my imagination.
She is the eternal source of my power, and so her absence is my indistinction; yet I am the magical source of her revelation, and so my absence is her dispossession of the truth we share.
When she is gone, my world is ravaged by the frost and cold, the wind and shadow.
And when I am gone, her world is ravaged by the fire of guilt, the stone of shame.
I view her inner conflict as a result of my need for her rejection, for I am the creator of a new world, and she is my progressive resistance.
Yet her conflict emanates from the truth she finds in the world I have shown her, for she is the
queen of that world, and I am the force of her progression.
She rejects my claim on her heart, for she is torn, and she is wary, and she is disillusioned.
But with a soothing tone she calls me back from the void of her absence, for she is caring, she is kind, and she is gentle.
She cannot resist the urge, the instinct, to comfort me again, for she knows she cannot lose me, cannot leave me.
Nor can I resist the force that draws me back to her, for I know that in the wake of her rejection she finds that soothing my spirit is her only means of comfort.
Her musical voice calls me back to her, that she may comfort me, that I may comfort her, for we are trapped in an unending cycle of separation of unification.
Her rejection is, in truth, the source of my evolution, for her absence makes me stronger, wiser, and more defined.
And my absence leaves her sad, and lost, and unfulfilled.
I am hers and she is mine.
One mind, one spirit, one understanding....
© Leonard Rocco Grillo