Parables of Ecstasy: Antonia Reflects on Her Love

No moon weeps
at the sight of the sun.
Its shape lies beyond
the veil of desire.
Is it love reflected
in the burning sea?
Is that my man
coming after me?

In the dying heat of a summer night, I spy the form of a tiny lizard, no bigger than my fingernail. I can only imagine what marvelous things it must see in its lifetime.

I see myself through its Lilliputian eyes; sense its alarm ooze through the pores of its skin. I must seem like a predator to it. I very much am, though not to such defenseless creatures. My tastes lie in being a slaughterer of men. My blue-eyed man, my Vaslav, wishes for a different way, I know. He wishes we did not have to kill. But I, for one, enjoy it. Call me a murderer, if you will. Call my hunger calamitous. But there is no other way. There never has been.

I look to him now, that handsome blue-eyed man, and still, I am startled at the innocence he shields within him. Such vast blue pours out from him, a deep sense of eternal love that robs me of breath. I did nothing to deserve such an encompassing love, yet here it is, shimmering from this pair of warm and wild eyes.