… sic volvere parcas?

 

Like a rusted scythe ready to strike out into the midnight air the crescent moon heralds a warm wind, heavy with wild jasmine and unfulfilled promises of a life half-lived. Overwhelmed, I fall to my knees as if struck to prayer, but in truth merely deaf and dumb in the realisation that it would take longer to fall out of love than it had to fall in love. And there, prostrating to no particular deity I cried out as my eunuch heart shattered once again and the memories of a failed love pierced my corporeal body like shrapnel. Wracking sobs lost in the vastness of the desert as my mouth fills with rivulets of arid loam that chokes the senses.

I dream of rain/I dream of gardens in the desert sand/I wake in vain/I dream of love as time runs through my hand/I dream of fire/Those dreams are tied to a horse that will never tire/And in the flames/The shadows play in the shape of a man’s desire/This desert rose/Each of his veils, a secret promise/This desert flower/No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this.

 

“The night is always darkest before the dawn,” I whispered to him as we lay in the early light that last morning. Our bodies, still wet and breathing heavy from a laboured love that would reveal itself like a shard of glass drawn slowly across a pale wrist stretched out. A child’s innocent belief in the man he loved. What once was a fount of hope now squats barren like the well in the courtyard just over the knoll ahead. Mute, in the midday sun I stare at the prehistoric reptilian that shares the blistering heat that singes my corneas and offers a dulled reprieve from the shrapnel within that moves steadily towards a fractured cavity. There are no more words for the betrayed heart knowingly deceived and corrupted.

And as he turns/This way he moves in the logic of all my dreams/This fire burns/I realise that nothing’s as it seems/I dream of rain/I dream of gardens in the desert sand/I wake in vain/I dream of love as time runs through my hand/I dream of rain/I lift my gaze to empty skies above/I close my eyes/This rare perfume is the sweet intoxication of his love.

 

Hushed whispers in the room beyond, its time to move again as the weeks meld into hours. There is scurrying as arrangements are made and things are packed. Forceful hands that are not unkind guide me to a leather cocoon shielded by blackened glass of the vehicle that will take me away. The little Suisse miracle numbs the vivid reality of the landscape that blurs into a mirage as the wheels gain traction and clamour towards an unspecified destination. As the sun-chariot recedes in the overhanging panoply of fallen Heroes, the smell of wild jasmine and almond oil momentarily confuses the mind in the wind that burns my face.

I dream of rain/I dream of gardens in the desert sand/I wake in vain/I dream of love as time runs through my hand/Sweet desert rose/Each of his veils, a secret promise/This desert flower/No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this/Sweet desert rose/This memory of Eden haunts us all/This desert flower/This rare perfume, is the sweet intoxication of the fall.

 

In the distance, a small mammal is lanced in a hawks’ talon. Struggling valiantly, it resigns itself to its fate and goes limp as it climbs higher and higher into the dying day. In that moment I refused to accept mine so easily.  For there is one who spins the thread, one who measures it out, and one who cuts it when the it is time. The flat arid land gives way to a fathomless ocean that encircles the shore. Blackened by the pale moon light, the devil waits to dance a macabre tango in memory of a man that usurped the place of a demi-god in my heart. I am not healed, but on the path towards something else.