An oldie but a goodie. Woot! Read on dear ones…
“I have to let you go.” My voice sounds strange, a whisper through hollow and bleached bones. I have crushed the conch shell of my heart with black combat boots, smashing it again and again until only pale pink and white pieces remain.
He blinks up at me with liquid ink eyes. “What are you talking about? Why?” His fingers reach out for me, tangling within the indigo fabric of my dress, trying to pull me closer. Instead I step back, tearing a tiny piece of a floral pattern off into his large hands. Bewildered, he gazes down on it as if it can tell him why I’m being so cold. But besides the rustle and the rip as I back further away, there are no sounds. No answers. The wounded look in his panther gaze makes my throat swell.
“I can’t keep holding onto you. You’re a dream I had over 10 years ago. I can’t keep walking into every coffee shop and wondering if I’ll see that scene: Van Gogh prints, fairy lights from the mezzanine, and… you, in a big armchair, waiting for me. I can’t keep waiting and wishing and wiling away my youth. I can’t keep looking for you in every musician’s face. I can’t keep running down the sidewalks and silently calling to you, wearing rose quartz, ‘Love Drawing’ essential oils and peonies in my hair. I can’t keep writing you letters and burning them to the fire, scattering the ashes to the wind. I can’t keep rejecting true human lovers because you might be out there. I can’t keep begging Aphrodite for you to come to me. I don’t even know if you exist. And maybe I had you; and lost you. Maybe a piece of you is within every person I’ve ever loved. Maybe you’re in another place and time. But do you know how many lovers I’ve run from, because they weren’t quite you? I can’t keep denying myself happiness. I can’t keep waiting on a dream that might not even exist. I want to fall in love. I…”
The Panther-Man pulls me close to him. I bury my face in his obsidian crystal curls and breathe in the smell of him: cedar, smoke and a sensual musk I can’t quite place. His every hollow fits into my every curve. I can feel him stroking my wild, golden curls with a gentleness that makes my eyes sting. Fingers untangling the snarls, catching my strands in his callused palms. My tears are soaking his t-shirt, silent sobs making me shudder. He feels so real. When did dreams begin to feel like flesh and blood? Why can I echo the steady thrum of his heartbeat with my own? Why can I hear his midnight voice making soothing sounds that only make me cry harder? How are his lips at my cheek and in my hair so true, so soft? It would be easy to stay here, in a misty vision of could-be and if only! We could tumble into cool white sheets and lose ourselves in an interstellar kiss, shooting stars within sea and oak eyes, bodies pounding like ocean waves on willing shores. He could play songs he wrote for me while I danced around and read the poetry he inspired. Would we ever age? Would we stay young, muses within the lovely duvet? Would time feel endless, or all too brief?
When I pull back, look into the splintered depths of his onyx eyes, my conch shell heart on the floor seems to tremble with longing, trying to piece itself together if only to give itself to him. A keeper far less likely to break it than I am. “Goodbye, Panther.”
“Goodbye, Lioness.” He lifts his hand in a wave, a somber smile on his well-known (and never-known) face. And like a ghost, he slowly fades away. He was never really here at all. Right? Right?
I thought being in love with a dream was hard. But leaving one to die? Leaving a panther man to dissipate into vapor and nonexistence? It’s so much worse. I’ll soothe myself with cigarettes and ice cream. And then I’ll ask Aphrodite herself to ease the ache in my caged ribs and holographic soul. Perhaps if I dance with her, in a haze of sensuality and pleasure, the yearning will cease. Time. Only time will tell.
(And what neither noticed, as he slowly slipped away, was the tiny shard of her heart that attached to the soles of his own boots – for without hope, is life ever worth living? She’ll burn the spells, but never the poems. Perhaps he will always live on, if only in dreams…)
Elisabeth Writing 