I followed hollow temptation down to the French Quarter. I sweat out desire even as I sweat from the humid, blasting fever pitch of the hypnotic sun. The stone walls closed in on me as I traveled down the sidewalk and tried my best to ignore the faint pulsing of unseen forces. In the Quarter, death is just as present, if not more, than life. It was built on blood and power. More than once I have let my guard down and with me a spirit crept on. They are bold here. They like the sun as much as the subterranean basements where historical seances are held. I am a prize to them.

A prize. A mothering portal. A tether to this world. Some are born with this gift, and others unwrap it through horror and loss. I’ll let you decide which hand I was dealt.

I floated through the smell of smoke and incense, dodging interested glances and calls to join the party. I wanted a spell.

I was young; I was lonely. I was odd, and I could not relate. I rarely felt a draw to others, and when I did, it was haunting. I met someone, and he struck something in me I could not put my finger on. He was a beautiful man, unreal. We had never been alone. I wanted him.

I wanted to open the door between us. I thought a love spell would do.

I went to where all the young lovers go. A shop on the corner of Jean Lafitte’s. A shop that stood on ground that had witnessed death by cholera, and  suicide by hanging. The tree felt ominous and too sturdy, as if it had practice holding the weight of swinging bodies for centuries. It took a while to discern which shops held real power and which were tourist traps. The gaudier, the brighter a shop; the less likely it was to hold real magic. It is the shops that fade into the background, that do not gleam, that hold the magic this city was built on.

This one was real. I could feel it. I could feel the haze, the untethering. The prickling at the top of my head. The slow, low chattering.

The sun burned, it pierced through the sensibilities, and I opened the door.

Someone told me once to hide the love in my eyes. I couldn’t help the blooming, the sudden light that entered when I looked at you.

I closed them so you could not see how much you meant to me and use it against me. The art of war is never let anyone know your greatest strength or greatest weakness. And love is more war-like than hatred. The games and connivances we play – never let anyone know you love them. Keep them in the dark and searching for confirmation. Keep them unstable and insecure: that is love.

I thought it strange your gaze would lower as if you were trying to hide too. I thought one of us should be brave.

I reached to touch your face. You stilled and closed your eyes.

I have prophetic dreams. I dream about what was, and is, and will be. I dreamt often about this man, and the dreams revealed nuances about his character. I dreamt he lured me into dark clubs and left. I dreamt he promised he loved me, and then he’d appear with another, and they’d laugh. I dreamt he was distraught, and angry that I believed such dark things about him. I dreamt we held each other close, in such a hysterical rush of love that I wept when I awoke. The first thought I had when I met him – do not fall in love, he will be the end of me. I tried so hard not to love him that I loved him in such a way that encompassed all of time and all possible realities. I loved him in this world and the next, and the next. I loved him in a way that would bind us no matter what happened between us.  I loved him for his sweetness. I loved him for his grief. I loved him for the air of self-annihilation that hung around him like poisonous gas and I loved him for the comfort his presence brought me. It was a love that opened all the world and made better all its horror.

And around and around we went, swallowed up by others desire to keep us apart. Heaven was not fit to house a love like ours, and neither is this world. And if you are unaware of the envious thoughts and hearts around you, you will sink like a stone in calm waters.

Your friends surrounded you like crocodiles in a moat, wide smiles and reptilian eyes. I rose unguarded and soft and naïve and let them pull me forward to you cutting through the waste of their obsession. As I walked across the room, a hundred rumors sprung up to meet me – she’s a whore - she tried to kiss me – she’s not safe – I took her home – she’s not right – whispers and whispers flying as each step I took towards you I watched the light evaporate from your face. You met me stone walled, and I stumbled at the change. It took me far too long to realize they wanted to keep you to themselves.

Only when I walked away would we be safe. Safe to rot under the unbearable weight of restricted existence where love may not be expressed, and divinity must be suppressed. A light that shines so brightly brings out the darkness that must take, a hunger that must be quenched by stealing and craving something not meant to be had. Once a covetousness spiral begins it will eat all within its arms and doom itself and all others. Who is safe from this desire?

We sit together and talk about a time when I almost drowned, swimming in wild rice. I laugh and say halfway through I thought about giving up because the water was too powerful. I laugh but I remember the wild rice twining around my legs and dragging me down. You look at me horrified and say indignantly, why wasn’t anyone with you? I meant this as a silly story, but you seem to feel threatened with my absence. I am oddly touched. We enchant the room with our closeness, and I tell you that I dream of disappearing. You tell me that you do too, and we should disappear together.

You said, let’s be friends, and I said I would try. You denied that you felt the same. I felt the weight of this love alone and believed that I had misinterpreted the glances, and the attraction. I told myself this and it felt hollow. I swallowed my pride, and I was happy just to be near you. I would laugh and find you staring at me. I would talk to someone else, and you would grimace. All this, and you feel nothing? I carried on through the charade. I danced and sent my love to the gods. I found someone else, and I lived a stable kind of love. We were close but it did not compare.

For some years we lost track of each other. I danced, I cried, I changed. I lost all the deadly heat and sadness draped around me like a shroud. I mourned what should have been, and poured the wild, repressed side of myself into many things. I grew wilder, and calmer, as the years shaped a woman out of me. I healed. But I never forgot you.

I had many sleepless, feverish nights where I sensed you were in danger. I had a long history of these frightening moments where I felt wholly at the will of a sinking ship brought down by plague and rot. Always, it lingered. The aftertaste of death. The rise from the ashes. Again and again, I succumbed to memories of horror and torture from the life I lived before you. If I took only one lesson from you, it was to free myself from the evil will of others.

And after years, we crossed paths again. We gamely gave our pre-scripted versions of happiness and congratulated each other on the dreams we chased. I thought, it was right to end this. But I wonder what it would have been like. He really does see me as just a friend. So, I floated through the crowd, and I talked to and hugged friends and strangers, and I felt myself pulled in by a strange rhythm, a magnetic pull into the eye of the hurricane. I felt a deep well of emotion rising up. I turned to leave, stricken by this strange sickness, and alone in the corner you stood, watching me. I turned to go, and you reached out desperately, and held my hand, looked into my eyes, clearly, and unafraid, and whispered, “I love you,” in a stolen moment I had prayed for many years- the façade falling apart and the charade imploding.

 And I wept, I wept, I wept, for the misery I endured alone believing I had imagined such depth to this love, and I felt hate for the cowardice you exhibited in letting me march bravely forward without the divinity we were offered together. The sadness of love that never fully blooms is more painful than not having loved at all. The crushing sense of repression broke my will and altered the very fabric of my existence. I wept with the force of three thousand broken dreams and the faltering rise of a late sun. I had begged God to take this love from me. I had felt lost. I had felt alone. For what? Two lives torn apart and drifting towards the abyss feeling unanchored and a deep, aching sense of something profound missing. I built a life on empty graves.

You watched silently as if moving would break the spell. I could not find the words. I left.

I wandered between a helpless sense of victimhood and a state of rage. Men place all their expectations on women without rising to meet them. They linger in their shadows and devise, scheme, and play until a force of nature makes them recognize their inability to rise above their lower nature. And rather than conquer this darkness, they blame the woman for awakening it within them. And rather than admit to being in love, which they consider weakness, they would rather bury it alive where it slithers restlessly like a starving snake. And rather than allowing themselves to be consumed alone by their own weakness, they suck the light out of her until she prays the love away.

And how can I love through the pain? How can I forgive you? Your confession did not make me feel safe. It made me feel used. As if you cannot recognize the truth of what is right in front of you unless another sees it first. Always with you it is a whisper in your ear guiding you through layers of deceit and another’s opinion always has prestige over mine. You cannot trust yourself. You blind yourself. You sacrifice me to satisfy the cruel urges of those you consider family.

And I see you on the outskirts of my life, here and there, flitting in and out of focus. You radiate a quiet acceptance and a quiet seething. You seem to me on the verge of collapsing under the weight of something heavy. I hear stories, and they paint you in a strange light. It’s as if you could never recover. I know I walked away and yet I still feel the pull. I sit in the Quarter underneath a full moon rising over the Mississippi River and I know I am meant for a great love. Was it you?