Eyes awakening to the truth of her dream,

Anessa rose to see she was still on the couch. A seizing in her stomach. She fell asleep with the radio on again. Her heart was pattering. The soft echo of music made the night feel unbound by time. She felt as though she hardly slept an hour. Head aching, she contemplated the days ahead, wondering if she would see him again. She didn’t even know his name, but felt his presence somehow still in the room with her. Like a silky cloth draped on her skin. Just barely warm and touching her softly. He was on that she wanted. But he was just out of reach. Blinking before the dawn, Anessa watched as the waxing crescent moon dipped its pearly cheek into the blue-black silhouette of the hilled horizon. She thought of the moon’s orb as her own mistress, working its fated magic. Turning night’s desire into her pawn, she would take what, at heart, was hers.

It was nearly three days later, and after many prayers and secret invocations, not to mention a bout of lucid dreaming, her first turn at crafting the future came to some fruition. There he was, like a vision, bending, breaking into being. What was once just wanting, so sly and evanescent, cycled into seeing, then believing. He glanced at her and saw her gaze. He looked away, but looked back again and smiled. It was all the sign she needed. That night, as the first quarter moon’s light shown on her face, she beckoned for the goddess to show her favor. She cast the bones and thumbed the stones, chanting her most fervent intent.

Another three nights gone. Midnight and Anessa confesses to the moonlight in the mirror that she can feel his affection growing from afar. She could feel him drawing in, closer to her skin. It was no longer a time for circumspection. She abandoned all her apprehension. The girl was confident that this man would take her from this cold place, at last. It was the waxing gibbous that shined assuredly in her eyes. Soon she would have to act. There was no room for humble timidity.

Anessa’s brimming heart was filling fast. She plotted in her mind to see him again that night. Now she knew his name, but would not speak it. For that might spoil the spell. Shaping the day – three days forward. Pressure building that couldn’t last. Full hearted and feeling her most attractive, she crossed the street at last, but where was he? He always came there to lunch. The sun was beaming, bright, and the white reflection of her dress and her electrical anticipation was blinding. But then, from behind her came a low, comforting tone.

“May I help you?”

It was him. He was hidden in the light all along. Anessa gasped and swayed.

“Yes! I’m new in town and a bit lost.”

“Have no worries. You’re in good hands.”

His words, we’re all the proof she needed had to carefully plan campaign with the proper conjuring and support, could make a strong man become manifested destiny. The two intertwined in conversation there at the sand laden cafe until the lights came on and the sun sank behind the sea. The next act was lighted by the full moon herself, filling the sky above with a broad beaming that flooded every eye and heart with pulsation. He found her. Even when she was searching for him. They danced and kissed and walked through the dunes in the pale blue light of night. There with the tides rushing to meet them, crescendoing like a symphony of salty desire, he took her purity, filling her with love, warm and unapologetic. She had never known such a feeling, but it was all she wished for. The ember had turned to flame. She was set ablaze by the night.

Two more nights of passion were to come. Anessa was enraptured in her man’s embrace. His eyes connected with her soul with every caress, every stroke, every deep, new sensation. She could not imagine the world without him in ecstasy, she forgot her own composure and called out his name. It was said and he smiled. But he never looked her the same way again. Waning, now, a sliver of silvery black was cast against the face of the lunar surface. He had filled her with all the love he had, and now his name was spoken. He confessed to her that he must return to his home and that he would have to leave her alone in the night. Abandon her with what she sought. Stealing away without her budding rose to comfort him, he must succumb to his worldly contracts. Ebbing back to the stellar-seeming recesses of some far off invention, his gift given, so golden bright in the last quarter moonlight, he promised to return.

The shade of farewells to come overcame her. Anessa withdrew like a lover shunned, for that she was. Loved and made whole in his arms, she knew then what a glass shattered by the height of vibration must endure. She shuttered for the letting go. But like a vine growing deep in the well below her heart she retained the golden glowing root of his plumb. A tertiary turn of the sun and moon dance and she could see the crescent again, now waning. Her dreams dissipated as if the aperture of desire itself had closed, so too, the passion she prognosticated faded. There was so much more at stake now than what she could want or need, alone.

The man, not so long ago unnamed, was soon gone, just as he had come. Into the western hills he disappeared, like every orb of day, had turned and went away. Only his essence remained with her. She would have to be satisfied with that. It was she who set the trap, of course. But it was he who captured her in the end.

New, the Moon, now sackcloth black. The month had been too short. Too full. At last, the night was still. Anessa wept for all she had lost and gained so fast. In the darkness her tears were hidden but they cleansed her of the magic she so naïvely invoked. Crying from her own bittersweet joy, to her obscured mistress she spoke, “On this night I give my grace for gifts of love and rhyme. Inside her shrouded hewn, in shade, she is reborn. In this womb, made sacred, turns the sanguine seed of time. This cursed blessing from which our lives are shorn.”