Cupid and Psyche

She wondered if she’d imagined him.

He came by the light of the street lamps on the patio, when only the night creatures skittered about.  Her eyes ached to see him, in vain.  He was a shadow, a blur, a mist.

He lay beside her, warm as animal breath, and loved her with his voice alone.  She couldn’t define what it was about that voice – perhaps it was just in her head.  He sang to her, his words were poetry, drug-deep, earth-heavy, moon-glistening.   What he sang, she never remembered when the morning came, and she woke alone.  Only this.

Don’t try to see me.

He made love to her like the wind to dry grass.  Her silvered skin swayed to his touch.  He penetrated her as a virus penetrates a cell, infecting her, replicating her, becoming her.  She felt him with her, inside and out.  Yet still she slept, and dreamed.

She knew that he loved her, although he never said the words.  She was a droplet and he an ocean.   He surrounded her – and then at dawn the tide went out, and she was left like a rock pool beyond the weed line.  She itched, day by day.  It grew worse.

He slept.  She reached up and brought the scorching dawn early into the room where they lay entwined.  His eyes met hers, for the first time, with sadness and understanding.

It wasn’t enough, was it?

She never saw him again.