***

In those eyes shone the desert sky that self/not-self had hurried under, the black chador scraping the tawny dunes, that pure cerulean that could bring a rain of fiery judgement or the exultation of summer, that flat blue of a Tarot card. In those eyes glittered cups with gold bellies floating on the fog: the beautiful woman that I could be, haloed in charm. The gray spire of a fairytale castle, the writhing serpent of jealousy when another woman's hips swayed to close to the source of this bounty, the tenuous wellspring. Lust's red dragon curled in a chalice of glittering gold with diamond studs, along with the pearls of the world's wealth, a laurel crown of art adorning a great gray skull. And in one of those cups, the Goddess stood with a veil over her face, her palms outstretched.

(The food eaten, the plates are cast aside, sticky rounds drawing ants and bees. He pulls me down onto the rough Mexican blanket, unbuttoning the green star-spangled dress with deft hands, spidery hands that dwarf mine. I: the smaller component of he, the puzzle piece. But he didn't ask, the mind chastises, rapping its wooden ruler against the knuckles of my lust. But he didn't ask, and how much of him is painted only with the brush of your dreams and the acrylic of your loneliness, how much runs on like a sentence without sense an article without fact save a momentary dream)

She almost looked like a mushroom, with the veil following the triangle of her reaching arms, and a strange glow backlighting her form. You cannot tell if she is Maiden or Crone, only that she stands straight. You cannot tell her intent, if she spreads the hands to mock or to offer. And somehow you know that it's you in the chalice, reaching out to a dark-clad shadow self that can only stand and gaze at the cloud-wisps that form the cups, the same clouds that danced and twisted into animals as you lay on your back in the grass, a small child watching that sky. Those eyes that are the sky. The shadow-self never reaches, for then the mirage would dim and fade, the oasis waters turning to an endless plain of sand

(My ears prick at the rustle in the branches, but only a silver flashing tail billows before its possessor scrambles up the tree. There is no sin in nakedness. There is no sin in what you are doing. And so, why do you bite your tongue tip and ponder philosophy, pretending not to see what you do and desire? Desire tastes salty, with the iron tinge of blood. He moans and I cover his mouth with my palm, feeling the white teeth against it. We turn it into a game, and in a moment my shoulder blades dig into the terry cloth and the pebbles of the earth beneath, the good moist earth which approves of such motions. The squirrels shrug and nibble; they've seen it before, as have the finches. I slam shut the blue blossom of my throat chakra to cut off noise, to cut off the gutteral exclamations of my animalistic self)

Desire's droplets condense into the white cloud that supports the Seven of Cups. A poet's hand holds the purple feather-pen, and a woman's long hair twists into the dreaming clouds. Aphrodite, foam-clad, points at her tasks as a chastised Psyche grovels before her naked feet, begging for the favors of her son. The giant Goddess with her long black ringlets does not relent: bring me the face cream of the queen of the dead. The seventh cup, you see, is always followed by the eighth, the cup of leaving. But it does not join the others on the cloud. And so, drugged by dreams and incense and glitter, by the light through the leaves, you behold the seventh cup of now and need. It seems so close now, close enough to your blunt-tipped fingers.

(The act: an offering. The hair of my spirit-self is twined with anemone and lotus blooms. The act pleases the foam-born. And so, I open the inner eye to see Her as I tango on the grass and the pebbles, on the black shining bodies of ants. Foam-born, I dedicate my pleasure to you. Whatever pleasure this brings, it is yours; may you return the gift. And unseen, she watches the theater, with an unfathomable smile, the same smile she gave to the war god under the sheets, or perhaps the one she gave to Psyche when she sent the poor girl on to her long road into the dark. The Naked Goddess is not the Wife; she hides pleasures in clam shells, but drops promises into the ocean as pearl beads. Promises are not her province; what you do to the pearl once you find it is up to you. She merely supplies them, forming beauty from friction and flesh)

It seems close now, but you know that the cold metal against your palm, if existent, will never be the warm metal of your airy dream. You know the promises made will never be kept, although you swallow this knowledge, a round pearl. You must not let yourself believe in the pebbled ground that bites your footsoles, or the toothy thistles. Believing in the cups, surrendering to the awe, requires one to choose. To choose surrender, even to a lie, even to that cruel force that drives you veiled through the desert, until you meet your inevitable end stoned at the hands of men. He'll be one of those that casts the stone, sending blood down your cheek. Or maybe he was already, in a life before, only ready again to repeat the process.

(We roll apart, sweet summer air filling our lungs with gold. My hands scramble for my dress buttons. He lies there naked, a gold smile crossing his long face.)

***

And he chatted in a pleasant tenor, telling me that I'm a good catch with my education and my mind, my free spirit and, of course, my 36-C breasts. He sang my praises. "You're a catch." Words sink back into my stilled throat, and I only murmured affirmative noises in a clear mezzo. He asked about my harp, and I told him.

The world still glowed with hyacinth and crocuses, unseen and ethereal, the realm of the air. Harp chords rang out, a music in my head, playing on the yellow strands of my hair. That sky gleamed from his eyes, and peeked through the branches and brush. Lost in the air, in the promise of spring, in a youth half-forgotten. He located his pants as I lay there, staring at small flying midges with white wings, at a yellow swallowtail that languidly fluttered on past. His words floated by me, inconsequential as moths.

I thought I loved him, but he faded in and out, a desert oasis, the illusion of puddles on a hot ribbon of road. There was a silver tie that bound our ankles, unseen, a rope woven eons ago and leagues away in a desert that I/not-I fled from a fate that he/not-he had woven for me, and I had acquiesced to. But I'm making this up, my mind protested. My heart roared No! and appealed to the Foam-Born, who smiled indulgently and took a vat called the heart, mixing together two fluids called love and lust.

Love was heavier than sex, and would eventually congeal to a red gelatin mass on the bottom. But after the fluids were both poured, they seemed to mix perfectly, aesthetically, with red and pink swirled in the liquid. He asked me to the beach tomorrow, and I agreed.

"I wish I could see you tonight, but I have plans," he said. He waved me back to the gathering. "Go and mingle. I'll get the plates and the blanket."

And so. I found the coven's Inner Court. Silvermoon punctuated her conversation with hand-gestures as she chatted with Otter, seemingly about drawing down, and the way the invocation sent the Goddess into her head and her form. "It's hard to come back," she mused. "I don't feel quite here. I think it'll take a few days." Her conversation drifted into the background as I walked over to the picnic table for a cookie. I saw her wave and smile at Christian as he came into view, sans plates and blankets. He walked over, conversation already in progress. My feet drew me to the car, where I slipped out of the story like a thief, back into the academic prose of my days, but still lost in that dream.