She put on her armour but left off the painted visor.
She opened, closed, and locked the front door as silently as possible.
For the benefit of whom, she was unsure.

She looks at the græy sky and thinks of his eyes.
She wonders about rain and sun and walks and shoes.
And thinks of his brogues.
Then his ankles.
Then his bluə-græy sky eyes.

And, her eyes go round like looking mirror pools.
And, her eyes go soft and shine.
She feels her eyelid muscles making expressions she cannot make on cue or command.

The neighbors open their door and a dog bounds to her: tail-shaking,welcome-waggin’ cometh. She relunctantly retrieves herself from her golden reverie.
And pulls her eyes sharp.

*

Not easy, is how she found it. Being tip-toer of labyrinths and garden mazes. This she enjoyed more than representing fertility allegorically. But, oh, howl she could howl for a good glass of wine or some potted green. Chaotic passion inside appeared smooth~like~silk to any outside observers.

Like Ariadne was abandoned, then beguiled to dreams only to then be slain, she knew what the men of the world did to spurious and impetuous women, gave them away or took them away to be locked-up. So, she measured her steps in eight counts, two sets of four paces per leg. And, she breathed in four ways with each way repeated three or five times. She acted the part.

She invariably met Bacchus in the woods. This time he believed his name was Dionysus. He never remembered meeting her until it was too late. She stopped insisting she knew him and played dumb.

“Yes, I do fancy wine, Dionysus, thank you kindly. Do you happen to fancy passion?”

She already knew the answer: yes, he did. Everytime and very much so. Ritual madness and religious-ecstacy made him high, high, high. So did speculation and grandstanding.

“I speak trances to even the cold-bloods.” She said this time, acting as Snake-charmer.

And, then and there did he again “give himself unto his Beloved in sleep”. Leaving her to live and die alone while he leapt through lucid dreams of curiosity mistaken as achievement or sometimes entitlement.

She had seen every tiara he gave her turned into one constellation or another in the night sky, intended as some magnanimous immortal display. Allegedly in her honor.

Blah blah blah. They were nothing more than the womanly model of the current apple in his mind’s eye. He made Stars to shine his light, reflect his ideal feminine quintessence of the moment. She served as a model for the perfect star. He often laughed that she mistook herself for a star when she was a simple model of one.

At first, it felt good. Then empty. Then oppressive. Then pathetic. Then, like an act she performed. Until then, she did not ought but drift like a swan on the blue. Silently. Waiting for him to meet her, love her, and then desire more than love, which would leave her to herself and her own devices.

**

“Eventually,” she said to No One,

“In the beginning, I left messages in the street.”

This won her the pleasure of being the mistress to the absentee No One man.

She was mistress to a man she had never met and Howl she loved him and knew his mind and body. Pleasures of pleasing and pleasuring.

She was married to the immortal man perpetually putting her on a petal-stool, but did not want for her pleasure or pleasing. He wanted a star, so he used her as a token paragon on a pedestal and sought pleasure and pleasing from every mistress he could render smitten.

But, she promised. She swore to fidelty. How was she to know that no one took sacred oaths literally? Now really, someone could have said something. She never laid with another man. But, the fiercesome pleasure she took from the No One man’s non-corporeal form, debased and debasing without even touching, felt Impeccable. Desperately patient for him; while good on her word, per se, to her Beloved; and Still effortlessly lovesome of the men. She only hated herself after all.

So what? She knew she must be somewhat immortal. She had died so many times, but immortality is lonely when your Beloved uses immortality to capture you both in the same circular ruins where there is no ’til death do us part because death always seems to be a sleep. At least, after the fact of dying, she only seemed to awaken from deep sleep in another place altogether.

It really got curiouser and curiouser. Did she mean “how curious” or “most curious”? Howl no, there was no superlative state of curiousness, just ever-increasing scales of what was curious and what was not. Deja-View pans over her.

She skipped the armour but put on the painted visor.
She opened, closed, and locked the front door as silently as possible.
For the benefit of whom, she was unsure.

She wonders about rain and sun and walks and shoes.
And thinks of ankles in brogues.

And, her eyes go round like looking mirror pools.
And, her eyes go soft and shine.

She feels her eyelid muscles making expressions she cannot make on cue or command.

No door is opened but the Candor of a pure fool looks at her from another side. He is softened and demurred. Bashful, curious, deferential and incorrigible. She sees it in his eyes. Innocent of entitlement and pure of desire to achievement. He seemed impossibly young in spirit but she recalled meeting him when she was young in spirit. Now the Deja-View inverted.

Ingenue and Guileless.

She became an artless, ingenous gal instantly. Free from disguise and dissimilation, she is what she is. She is no mere actress of fain. Freed of herself at the sight of him.

He is artless too, and, candid, and frank. Strangely innocent.

⊙⊙

The tonic was a keytone of ecstasy.

She is beside herself

And across from

A man always beside himself.

She wanted to pursue him relentlessly, meet him time and again in the woods.

She became silent.

A real dummy for the effulgent fool.

She became rekindled.