When have I last looked on the round green eyes and the long wavering bodies of the dark leopards of the moon? All the wild witches, those most noble ladies, for all their broom-sticks and their tears, their angry tears, are gone. The holy centaurs of the hills are vanished; I have nothing but the embittered sun; Banished heroic mother moon and vanished, and now that I have come to fifty years I must endure the timid sun.

- William Butler Yeats

Sarah McLachlan sings of needing distraction. I need a distraction from you, but her sad sweet warbling does nothing to distract, it only focuses, intensifies. You've done it yet again, reaching out through the darkness with those long, lovely fingers, making me yearn and ache with a longing I cannot describe, except in tears. My round green eyes blink in the moonless night, trying to clear the clouds of tears, the better to see you with my dear.

I'm just a pair of glowing green eyes in the inky darkness that separates us. So many glowing eyes in that darkness, how arrogant, how foolish, of me to want you to notice mine. I wish you could see these green eyes as they gaze in wonder at you, full of recognition, tenderness, yearning, knowing, desire; I wish you could see the smile you put in these eyes. I don't think I ever wanted, needed, so strongly to be seen as I do with you.

You stir the wild witch inside, indeed a most noble lady, whose fingertips ache to caress eyelids, cheekbones, hollows of necks and bellies, whose lips want to whisper warm moist sweet-nothing secrets into waiting ears. I am bewitched by you, ensnared in your webs, webs so tantalizing sweet, dusting me with your powdered honey every time I touch them. But the only spells I can cast are with words, and my magick is powerless in your presence, a weak and pitiful mewing easily lost in the lusty laughter that surrounds you.

I've reached out across the darkness, once, twice, felt the wonder of your hand in mine for a brief moment. But your hand moves on too quickly, too many hands grasping, too many hands to explore. For you are searching, and what you are searching for doesn't lie here, not in these arms. So I must retreat back into the silent darkness, just a pair of glowing green eyes once more, being content to let the long wavering laps of your soul wash upon me as you swim past.

But I'm drowning in this lapping ocean of you, a rip tide of emotion that pulls me further and further out to sea. I wish I were a mermaid, a siren whose green eyes could lure you with songs of beauty and mystery untold, I wish I were a creature magnificent enough to make you want to follow me when I beckoned. I would write you once more, telling you how amazingly wondrous you are, for feeling foolish seems a small price to pay for your touch - and if I cried out, you'd try and rescue me, for that is the kind of person you are - but I know, as much as it breaks my heart, that the better gift to offer is my silence, my silence to match yours.

So, here I am, paddling parallel to the shore, fighting the instinct to swim straight towards the shore, towards you, trying to save myself from myself.

Trying so hard to convey my feelings without giving myself away,

Jan