[ 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 the mother in her 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.
