Ghost Colored Dawn
(Written 1998)
Her big green eyes moved over me. They would slide along slowly and then suddenly pounce on something, someone, as if there were many beautiful things in the world to watch, to explore. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, blinking her eyes at me, waiting patiently for me to finish. I was looking at a painting that she had completed only a few weeks before.
I studied the black brush strokes that varied from intense to gentle against a pale bluish, almost ghost-colored dawn of a background. They merged to create an almost feminine form, so aesthetic, so mutable, so much a function of it’s own motion, the light across it, that any attempt at a static interpretation seemed doomed from the outset. The broad, black strokes began to fade towards the center or the painting, covered by faint impressions of a musty gray, not quite like fog, so much as mist. Not a mist that obscures, but more like one that surrounds, comforts, provides a gossamer blanket with which on might find the comfort of darkness, of sleep.
That was what the painting represented to me; the essence of darkness.
I looked at her again. Her eyes were on me still. She sat there on the edge of her bed, arms extended by her sides, propped up on the bed. Her head was tilted to the side, her platinum hair falling lightly on the pure alabaster hue of her neck. She smiled with an expression that displayed a weariness combined with a kind of playfulness. She seemed relieved. She extended her hand to me as she spoke.
“Take my hand, I want to go for a walk,” she said softly, the smile still playing on her lips. She let her eyes fall off of me, her head hanging lightly and she looked at the ground. She lost herself in thought for the briefest of moments.
I looked outside. It was close to 4am and it had been raining for hours. Hardly the weather for a stroll, I thought to myself. My lack of response brought her out of her reverie, and her eyes pounced on me again.
She tilted her head slightly and her hair slid across her neck, falling on her shoulders. The effect was serpentine, hypnotic. “Come on, don’t be afraid. The rain never hurt anyone, and as for night,” she paused and turned her face towards the window, giving an image of her sculpted profile against the rain illuminated from the streetlights glowing softly below.
She continued, “Darkness still loves lovers, even if the world no longer does.” I accepted her hand and she led me out into the night.
