When we found each other, I believed myself a fine man. We blossomed together in the light of mutual adoration beyond all possible imagining.

But then, she began the incomprehensible dance of her way, and in that dance, she bid her serpent kill me, even as she escaped his chains.

As the poisons found my pulse, as if this were not fearsome enough, she disappeared entirely, just when I most needed the brilliant reassurance of her voice’s angel and her gaze’s radiance.

And in the forge of such loss and terror I was remade, and my shell, previously inviolate and invisible, became first obvious, and then torn. Bewildered, I escaped it’s prison, and stood naked and renewed to truth.

Now, I see it was not me that died, but the lies I wore to myself and the world. Free of this shell, I am true, at last. But she is gone, and I cannot know her errand or mind.

She has left me not only alive, but with wings beyond my capacities to exhaust. She, too, has acquired them. Our love’s essential light and shadow are their pinions and our hopes in one another their power.

My heart prays that we shall soon find the skies together, in joyful adoration. But no matter what may come, I shall not return to the shell, and each time I spread my wings her memory will blossom, and my gratitude shall flow like heaven’s cleansing tears.