Her Lunacy

[ Ego, Orpheus, fēminam in tūtō tenuī cum inferōs timēret.]

The nights were sleepwalking in the strangest shadows. The forbidden forest seemed to move in otherworldly songs that floated like an ominous specter over the black river. As if the forest mist were the soul of the trees, a hypnotic entity that reached deep within her, a desire so intense that he evoked a rain within the river. 

She was unable to sleep, but she would rather touch herself like a lunatic, a woman loving the moon so darkly that, to her, that may feel like the love itself was a madness. She felt strangely liberated in letting her dark thoughts conjure with the mist, imagining a serpent so big that the river felt like a fairy in the heart of the forest!

She would paint her lips with the shade of sparkling blue that resembled the kiss of death, for to her, the kiss seemed exceedingly real, a ghostly presence that she could touch with her lips. Her sleepless nights were transforming into rainy fantasies, where she could hold on to a memory as if the past and the present were taking the shape of her demon lover, a form so powerful that it lifted her body like she had butterfly wings!

She would just lie back and let her body entwine with the shadows of the forest. Sandhya would undress in front of a gilded mirror that was made entirely of volcanic sapphire. The shining blue stone had beautiful black threads inscribed on it, and she would trace her fingers along those lines. She would sit silently in the dusk, watching the last rays of the sun trace her earthly curves before she was taken by the moon. 

She would wear a garland of green stones that she had found by the riverbank, and admire how the green and blue would look together. She could feel the serpentine desires of the moon embrace her with gentle turns, and her own naked feet turning into a snake’s body, in love with the entity that safeguarded her from all the dangers of hell.  

She wanted to know if there was an end to this love, an abandonment that would make her wait in the shadows with a bereaved heart. In her desolation, she could see the lights slowly disappear in the eyes of the prisoners, men who were cursed to forget all senses of beauty out of the terror of ghosts! 

Even so, she could feel that all the intercourses she had with love were converging on her redemption from the shackles of deceit and distrust that she had unknowingly known! In the embrace of death, she could feel that parts of her were dying, but then she realized that the dying souls had fulfilled their roles in the dark theater.

Yet, she needed to ask, who decides that the time is gone? Who had set the stage, and who was directing the theater to its redemption? How was she seen by the man whom she missed so dearly? She wanted to know if the dreamy theater thought of her as a captive, for she wanted to spread her dark wings and fly to heaven one day!

Captor, amāvī tē quī mē vēxistī in corporis coitum mihi

Allēvāta mōmenta sunt silentī umbrārum mortis

Exōrāta trīstis mea, dum periēre tempora deō

Dēscendistī tuō virīlī imperiō; ego ipsa in infernum propter tē dēscendī.

हे बन्दिग्राहक, अहं त्वामकामये यः मां मम कृते शरीरस्य सङ्गमे नीतवान् ।

मृत्योः छायानां मौने क्षणाः लघूकृताः अभवन् ॥

देवस्य कृते कालेषु विलयेषु, शोकाकुला अहं प्रार्थिता अस्मि ।

त्वं तव स्वकीयेन पौरुषाज्ञया प्रत्यवरूढः; 

अहं स्वयमेव तव कारणात् पाताललोकं प्रत्यवरूढा ॥

* Latin and Sanskrit are written with the help of AI.