What is a little madness between friends?  To trip the lite insane.  To realize we once grounded our souls in abject pain.

He’d loved me as a shadow, reflecting her ethereal glow.  Eventide ebbed and waned as passion and pride did flow.  She’d floated gossamer skeins of fairy wings, sweet lust, a thrust, a single point of flame.  

I’d fingered the ring, then splayed the waves, intent to play and sidle away from vows and onerous things.   We’d schooled and teased and brazened our way, freed from our constructs, alive in our greed, with time on our side, no need to take heed.

She is a jealous mistress, this thing that passes free, unfettered in the moment, soft about her edges, fractured at her core.  She stroked my womb and pinched my heart, yet stole away the seed, to leave me languished, rockbound on stormy, turbulent seas.

He’d found the cave to which I stole, an accident said he, yet I knew as women sometimes do that fate had intervened.

He’d had a sadness ‘bout his eyes, uncertain to proceed, restrained as men will do when emotion cuts and bleeds. 

I spoke of loss, he spoke of pain, of how she’d fought, of what she’d gained.  She’d had a life, yet I’d had none, and I had not the means to sooth or empathize with agony untamed.

I opened to his probing and knew the future clear and held him close til passion spent and stroked away the fear.

I touch my son, so like him now, as I prepare retreat.  My cave awaits, the lies in place, and I must find my way.  We’d made a choice that fated day to err to lust’s thick heat.

And so I leave to find my friend, he waits across the bay.  His back to me, his shoulders hunched, his fairy he still seeks.  I stroke his arm and take his hand, and will the sad away.  We shrug our burdens and proceed, warm sea will we embrace.  Lumens freeze with light insane, as madness sheds its chains.  With halting steps I back away, allow his soul some ease. 

I stroke my womb and sigh a sigh, content to say goodbye.  The pain remains, it cuts us deep, sweet secrets taint this need, ‘til fear is all we keep.  Where is my life now that he’s free and I stay tethered to the shore, for then he’d loved me, though this I know, he’d loved his fairy more.