Love Under the Full Moon

I'm walking along a winding garden path. It's midnight and the sky is filled with a million twinkling stars. I can hear a small stream burbling somewhere just out of sight. Elderly, gnarled trees with vivid purple flowers arch over my path, blocking out most of the starlight. Though I can't see the sky, I know that the stars are twinkling; their faint and friendly light streams through the branches and lands among my bare feet.

I walk and walk on, relishing the soft night breeze that wafts around me. I hear an owl hooting in the distance. Not a single other human soul is near me, and I find glory in solitude.

The path meanders gently uphill. I climb steadily, breathing slow and deep. I am safe within my physical form. It is a good vessel, and the physical world is full of sensuous pleasures to enjoy.

Finally, I emerge from the tree-lined path at the top of a hill. I am at its highest point. I can feel the earth beneath me, mossy and green and alive, breathing in the moonlight. Everything feels tingly and alive tonight. The stars, and the trees, and the earth, and especially the moon.

The moon is wide and white and full, dripping with liquid silver. I turn my face to look upon her glory, and I am bathed in her numinous light. As I bask under her gaze, I feel the oddest sensation. It is as if, my whole life, my skin had been prickly and hot and uncomfortable, but I never knew it because it had been constant. And now finally, blessedly, I have been dunked into a cool and soothing pool, lovely and dark and deep. The cessation of the pain I never knew I had is instantaneous and heady, an invigorating, icy rush.

I open my mouth to the moon wide, and wider still, hoping to imbibe her luminous essence deep within my being. It's not enough. I need more, desperately. I need to feel the moon's glow everywhere.

Slowly, I pull off my white cloak. I drop it in a pile at my feet. I pull off my white silk shift dress, one shoulder at a time. It too slips through my fingers and pools on the soft moss beneath my bare feet.

I can feel her now, her silver-white gaze lapping at my naked skin. I look down at my nakedness, and I see every soft curve, every shadow lit with the clear and pale light. My skin is bleached silver-white, and I swear I can feel the moonbeams dancing across my body like a physical presence. I lift my arms and close my eyes and spin. The beautiful light envelopes me, holds me, caresses me. I sigh. I am so comfortable, sinking deeper into my precious vessel, this body that allows me to feel. My skin feels perfect and right.

I lie down, face turned toward sky, back nestled into a soft bed of green moss. Soft and cool, gently piercing, the beams of light move down my form. My eyes slip sweetly closed, and the last thing I see before settling into the darkness within myself is the moon's pale face. I can still feel her silver fingers, tantalizing and smooth, just where I need them. They move slowly at first, waking parts of me from their restful slumber. The moon knows, and the moon feels what I feel. She knows just what I like. She wants to make me feel good. She cares for me, and she does it so well.

Her smooth, silver fingers move faster now, and oh, it's so good, and all I want in the world is for her to keep moving like that. Yes. Please. Right there. And beams of light are cradling my head gently. I am held, safe and sound, like something supremely valuable and breakable. But I do not break. Not yet.

The moon knows how to hold the tension, quivering and delicious and taut, and she holds it right there, just on the edge now. The moon has learned, through eons of moving the tides, the importance of timing. She pulls me there and then back, there and then back, until finally, finally, it is time. And her silver fingers, oh, how I love them there, yes right there, oh please, please let it be time. And her face, and her light, and her fingers, and her body, oh god, I want it all.

And the moon, she holds me while I break into a million shimmering pieces, and I am only stardust in her silver embrace. Sparkling tears stream down my face and land among the heavens like diamonds. She holds the empty space my form once occupied. I am reborn.

I am whole and well and complete. I am new and I am ancient. I am the universe understanding itself.