PSYCHE

by J. Neil Carmelo Garcia, from The Sorrows of Water

Her error is believing she can only love him with the soul. For her sake he has been real enough-- shadow-clad and without a body, the way she accepts everything must be in the naked beginning. His voice, to her, is water: when he speaks she feels she hears his true self purling out of rocks in a blurred, dreamy forest-- a thought which makes her shimmer, unrecognizable, to herself. His words: she does not mind stepping into them, makeshift houses of sound, which the soul inhabits if only to be known at all. But the rest of his breathing absence, his lack of shape and face-- she fancies to be his most beautiful feature. Thinking herself enlightened, she must make him see she seeks him past the accidents of sight, smell and taste-- faint flowers crumbling under her sheerest touch. So it comes to her as a surprise she needs him whole, after all. Like a craving for something sour, the desire for texture seizes her one breezeless night-- and she finds herself stealing toward him with a lamp, dim and sighing. The rest we remember as a tale about gods teaching mortals a bright lesson in temperance: love, a labor of roots and sap ascending from soil to fleshy fruit, is not so much given as deserved. But in her mind what will linger is the specter of his skin, filmed and warmly gleaming with drops of fragrant oil. Beholding him laid open, at once, she understands: the love of body is the love of form. Body-- the luminous edge where the soul can begin.