leti

The moon and mirrors have this much in common: you cannot see behind them.

She seemed fragile as a moonflower — destined to bloom for a single lovely night, and then to fade and fall.

Pre-Raphaelite, she combed out her long, black hair to stream straight down from a centre parting and thoughtfully regarded herself as she held a tiger-lily from the garden under her chin, her knees pressed close together.

‘I shall go down into the garden. Into the night.’

“He kissed her anyway, lightly on the cheek, before she turned to get her coat, thinking how long he had known her and how little he knew her and how little he knew of how much or little there was in her to know.”

“Her eyes were black as the night sky between the winter constellations.”

“His own face, with sharp bones at cheek and jaw, dark eyes beneath pale brows, looked, he thought, wild and austere: a monk’s face, a wizard’s face.”

“I had slept through another day. Or perhaps there were no more days; they had withered and died for the season, left us with the winter flowers of darkness and dreams.”

“…the rose as red as blood that bloomed in the dark water, more beautiful than any living rose.”

“She seemed made of lace or wings, nothing real. Not bones and weary skin — nothing that could ever be old.”

“…where the wild roses grew among the tame…”

“Barefoot. And with rose petals in your hair. You look like something conceived under a mushroom.”

“The well was one of the wood’s secrets: a deep spring as clear as light, hidden under an overhang of dark stones down which the brier roses fall, white as snow, red as blood, all summer long.”

“It’s as if the year were kneeling to pray in a vast cathedral full of mellow stained light, isn’t it?”

“…she was very slight and small, with softly curling dark hair and big, sweet, timid brown eyes, and a little wistful, pale face.”

“If a kiss could be seen I think it would look like a violet,”

“We’re to seek for beauty and refuse to see anything else.”