Darkened Reflections

I sit here listening to the rain tinkling off the darkened glass of my window. Like so many nights before, I peer into an eternity of nothingness that shows only my blurred face in its shadows. Shadows that dance around in the ambient light as the wind whips and sways the tree limbs, keeping pace with the rain as it shifts from a patter to a pounding, to a more gentle touch on the pane.

I begin to turn away and see just the merest suggestion of movement from the corner of my eye, I turn back… But nothing has changed, nothing is different, no one is out there. My blurred view is as it was before. Rivulets of rain running down the glass; impressions of shapes I know so well that exist out there beyond the safety of my window; my face looking back at me lost in the dreary visage of the existence I suffer within. A face distorted by the passage of the rain running over the glass… a face twisted in pain.

I wander to the door, drawn by a force from both within me and outside these protective walls. What an exquisitely beautiful night to breath in the smell of the wet grass, the saturated earth, the dampness all around me.  What a sumptuous night to twirl circles in my tattered gown, soaked and clinging to my body like a lover that has been released but wishes not to go. What a glorious night to stroll under the rows of the ever reaching Maple Trees, listening as their limbs sing a song of agony as they rub against one another.  I let the rain wash me clean under the hidden moon before wandering farther into the shadows of this night.

The beast has awoken; I can feel him watching, waiting, growing from the pangs within me. Will he come to me, this creature of anguish? The rain is slowing to a mere drizzle, barely even falling now – floating on the breeze like his warm breath upon my bare neck.  Will he stalk me in the lingering mist?  I live knowing that he terrifies me, even as I long for his touch; the touch of a soul as dark and tortured as my own.

The moon tries to protect me with its light, but I am still hidden in shadow as is he – this monster of beauty and destruction; this primal creature that will destroy me; this half-man half-beast that will ultimately consume me.  How long can I resist his not so gentle pull into the darker reaches of the woods that now surround me? Do I even wish to try? Or would I willingly rush to him if only he’d beckon and not demand of me?

I stand on the brink of the deeper shadows trembling from fear; fear of the need to take that final step. I feel his want calling out to me – yes, he wants me to enter his world, but he does not guarantee that my journey there will be a sane one. I move out of the shadows and  fall to my knees weeping, begging him to emerge from the dim recesses and enter my world of now glowing moonlight. But he fears the light, no – not fear – hate. He hates the light. This light that shines upon my upturned face and tangled hair has been his undoing. He was not always this beast, he was once a creature so different and so full of life that he has no choice but to loathe the fact that I have not become what he is. His presence demands that I enter his domain; his mind delves into mine attempting to force his want upon me – but I know his lust is insatiable, and once he has touched  my darkness, will I ever be able to return to the light again?

I’m frightened, I can not move, and he is enraged by this – so angered that he nearly allows himself to reach out and grab hold of me, dragging me to him. I will not fight him; I will let him take what he will, but I can not willingly submit even under his heated gaze.  With a snarl of anger and disgust, he leaves me yet again to weep at the edges of the darkness, screaming silently to be where he’d have me go…

But no, he will not take me, I must come to him; my damaged companion, my kindred tortured soul who seeks nothing more than I – a release from this distant embrace of hellish pain we are destined to exist in.

I hear him howl into the night; he screams his rage while crying out his longing for that which may someday leave what  meager light the moon sheds to walk in the dark at his side – owned by him for all eternity.