Playing piano before a raining window. The pulse of thunder. She shudders.
White stucco walls rough-hewn, so cool to the touch she thinks they're damp - sweating. The walls are stained a rust-blood color at the edges. When it rains the walls drip and melt and cry.
The clip-clop of hooves in the gravel, on the cobbles. Hooves. Hooves.
A band of white light glows on the ceiling in the corner above the window. The remainder of the small room is engulfed in shadows of varying tones of grey.
The uneven plaster and the rain stains edged with delicate filigrees of mildew give the walls the look of an old Italian palazzo. They remind her of how she imagines Venice to be: stains, mildew, moss, the lap of water below long narrow windows, the plash of gondolas, the cry of birds, a groaning, a deep hum, greens, blues, violets, greys, black, white - a beautiful terrible melancholy - sinking Venice - city of tears - drowning in its own tears.
At night she wakes to find an angel standing at the foot of her bed. Its eyes glow in the dark. Its velvet wings unfold to embrace her.
She spends hours in the dark church, candleflame shadows shivering on the vivid frescoes - enthralled with the jewel-toned saints in their blood ecstasy, imagining their arms opening for her - their wounds like red mouths, parting to kiss her - to drink her in like sweet communion wine.
She loves the village church most of all: the vividly painted frescoes of bleeding supplicant ecstatic saints make her pulse throb maddeningly. The chanting litanies, the sweet musk of incense and sweat, the cloying bouquets of flowers and smoke of candles burning. She imagines the arms of the Virgin opening for her, beckoning.
The grey stone sweat-damp and glistening in the candlelight, the incense burner swaying, the shudder of the organ and candleflame, the spiraling falsetto of the altarboys, the lurid glow of the sunbeams floating dreamily through the thick jeweled panes of the high arched windows.
The air in the small claustrophobic chapel smells of the dust of ancient incense, candlesmoke, mildew and blood and sweat and thick red wine and flowers - a hundred indian flowers burning.
The heat in the church is stifling. The worshippers press against one another on the narrow, velvet-lined pews. The heat of the candles, the hot breaths of the hymns fogging the stained glass windows.
The song of the organ is a blood pulse quickening. The hymns of the choirboys spiral higher and higher in a shuddering ecstasy - waves of pleasure washing over her.
Sometimes when she drinks the altar wine she imagines she is drinking blood. It is thick and tastes of pennies, of the sea.
With seagrass, kelp, grapevines & seashells, she builds a little oratory.
She weaves the vines between the limbs of four little pear trees to form a thin thatched roof and walls with kelp and seagrass and carpeted the floor with moss and seashells - fanshells. She builds an altar of limestone and beach glass and here she kneels to pray.
She makes exquisite little prayerbooks - handmade papers sprinkled with moss and tiny flowers, rose petals, sea grass, delicate watercolors of ethereal silkspun angels and florid flowery purple calligraphy - poems she herself pens to the saints whose lurid glory spread across the cracked walls of the dark smoky chapel.
On the dawn of her wedding day, she dons her wedding frock of thin pale silk and tiny seed pearl buttons, lets down her hair - tumbling down her back - a spill of ink - a garland of flowers in her hair. She walks through the village and up the hill to the highest bluff overlooking the sea.
Blue-green sea licks the white sand. She stands on the hilltop, foot up on a rock - crushed silver slippers shimmering like moonlight, frail white silk slip flutters in the wind - petal-delicate.
Memories flood her mind in sepia tones - like old photographs forgotten in a trunk in the attic - pale bodies moving against each other slowly, glowing luminous in a candlelit dark, breathing staccato sighs, her pulse quickens, at the memory of these kisses - her violet eyes scan the horizon - fill with hot tears - the emerald waves crash, foam sprays her face - ice teardrops rain down her cheeks, salt her lips. She licks the seawater away, tasting again the kisses, soft long, velvety deep kisses.
The muscles in her body tense, she is an arc of silver against the night sky, her dress - a mermaid's tail as she slips into the cool milky green water.
Some say she flung herself over - into the sea, for she never again descended that hill. But no bones ever washed up on shore. Those the wiser say an angel floated down from the clouds - swept her up in its embrace - above the waves and flew up into the heavens with her.
Sometimes I see her in the night swimming in the sea - the black water rippling away from her pale glowing form - parting like the satin petals of a black rose - the moon swimming in the water beside her. I imagine the long tendrils of sea grass entangling her long silky legs - fluttering like moths wings in the darkest wet depths.
She floats on her back - white skin, long black hair, green jewelbrite eyes, red mouth. I see the mounds of her breasts - rising and falling with her deep breaths - the dark peach of the nipples - the black silky tangle between her thighs and the flash of pink as they open and close and open and close so slowly - so gracefully like the beating wings of a butterfly.
I see her long black hair fanning out around her head in a halo, I see the stars glittering in her pale green eyes, the pink bud of her sweet lips parting to take in the warm fragrant night air. The long round arms, sweet small hands, rounded belly and breasts and thighs and calves, little baby toes - little piggies. Her body is ripe and succulent - as fruit ripe on the vine - pink-white, peachflesh, plump and heavy and swollen. Ripe.
Her hair - a spill of ink, her eyes - slivers of seagreen ice, and that bloodstained mouth - tilting up and opening slowly - to take in my kisses like wine. A flower blooming, petals unfolding, veins pulsating, wings beating.
I am that sea grass snaking round that cool pale calf, curling round the silk thigh, sneaking between her thighs. I am the black water. I am the moon reflected in its depths, I am that black mirror in which she floats.
