Free Psyche in a Dress by Francesca Lia Block Page A

cold
    That was when you came
    Through the open window
    with the night-blooming jasmine
    that grows up the old stone garden wall
    You knelt beside my bed and put your head near mine
    You whispered, “I just want to lie beside you tonight
    I won’t hurt you”
     
    I was afraid at first
    Lay very still, waiting for pain
    It felt like a scene from one of my father’s movies
    The killer with the beautiful voice
    For a moment I wondered
    if my father had staged the whole thing
    If he had a camera somewhere?
    I wouldn’t put it past him
    You only talked to me
    You said, “Tell me”
    You asked, “Do you think Love and Soul are the same?
    If not, how does the Soul earn Love?
    How does Love find his Soul?
    Can one exist without the other?
    If Love and the Soul had a child
    what would her name be?”
     
    “Tell me your name,” I said
    “You already know
    If you are Soul
    I am the other one”
     
    I heard the sea in your voice—
    sheer waves breaking on pale powdered sand
    I heard the glossy rustlings of the cypress and olive trees—
    the footsteps of maenads and panpipes playing
    echoing caves in the mountains—
    cloven hooves striking the rock
    At their approach birds took flight into the white skies
    After a long time I fell asleep
     
    In the morning you were gone
     
    But you came
    again and again
    I asked to see you but you said
    that was the one rule
    I couldn’t put on
    the light
    Even so, I asked you to lie beside me
    After a while I reached out
    and held your hand
    “I’m so crazy,” I said
    “What’s wrong with me?
    You come through my window at night
    I haven’t seen your face
    And I want you”
     
    Even in darkness
    your lips taste of sunshine
    They leave a slight stinging spray on my lips
    Your skin melts over me
    I feel you enter like a shaft of light
    My bones dissolve around you
    We become liquid, eternal
    I am released
    from my mortality
     
    You wiped my body with a cool towel
    I told you what my father shot today
    You said, “If you were my daughter
    I would just sit you in front of a camera
    and let it watch your face for hours, every expression”
    “He cut off my mother’s head,” I said
    “He made it keep talking
    She had to have a mask made of her face
    plaster and bandages
    She is claustrophobic
    and she said she almost died
    breathing through those little straws”
    You held me in your arms
    and pressed your lips against my hair
    After a long time you whispered
    “The wild girls cut off Orpheus’s head
    He shouldn’t have looked behind him
    His music could have brought
    Eurydice back from the dead”
     
    “But he didn’t hear her footsteps,” I said
     
    “You can’t doubt your gifts”
     
    “Maybe he didn’t doubt himself
    Maybe he doubted her, his love for her”
     
    You were quiet, thinking
     
    “My father doesn’t doubt,” I said
     
    “What about you?”
    I shook my head
    Doubt tastes like sand in the mouth
     
    “Philomela was raped
    and her tongue cut out so she wouldn’t tell
    She turned into a nightingale and sang
    her story”
     
    You told me all the myths, one after the other
    night after night
    my beautiful, brutal bedtime tales
    As you spoke I closed my eyes and saw them come to life
    the miniature figures acting out their parts
    When we fell asleep
    my dreams were more vivid than they had ever been
    As if I were watching your dreams in my head—
     
    The man who got to be a flower with a hundred petals
    admiring himself in a pool forever
    while the girl who loved him was only a voice
    unable even to choose her words
    The girl who crashed through the earth
    in a chariot drawn by black steeds
    punished for just one red pomegranate seed
    unable to choose where she lived
    a queen
    only in darkness
    a princess, her mother’s daughter
    weaker
    in the light
     
    Love’s mother, the jealous one
    who sent his beloved on a quest
    carrying her heart in her hands
    like a broken urn
    Love the shining god with wings
    Love the monster
     
    “I love you,” I