Lunatic

It was if she’d seen a ghost. The movements, the perception, the expression was all mystical. I couldn’t quite grasp it, I didn’t have a name for it but she just wasn’t herself. Her name was Cara, we had been dating 2 months and not until now had I seen this side of her, this whimsical and possibly paranoid existence. “Have you seen the moon tonight?!” Cara beckons, arms outstretched reaching toward the sky leaning back as she spoke in a sing-songy voice. Her tone laced with hypnosis, her appearance slightly pale. “No,” I said plainly, “what about it.”

She grabbed my hand and led me out of the house. We sprinted down the stairs, through the courtyard and deep into the woodsy area behind her apartment, and there between the envelope of several oak trees, in the dark brush of the night was the moon, full and bustling with ominous presence. “She speaks to me,” she whispered, “she tells me about my dreams.” I stood silent with intrigue. Cara held my hand tightly and leaned into the nape of my shoulder, it was late October and nights were growing colder as the year passed on. I began to feel a tingle in my palms right in the center, where her pulse and my pulse aligned.

“Dance with me!” As wild and beautiful as she was Cara and her distressed jeans, matching jacket and olive colored sweater, slipped into the deep dark where the trees had no end. She ran quickly trailing behind her a bed of strawberry blonde hair and me, following the sound of her footsteps and the weight of her impact of the earth. Aside from the moon it was pitch black. My anxiety began to heighten, I didn’t want her to get lost, I couldn’t imagine if she fell and truly I had no idea what was happening.

She stops, and I collide with her steadying the both of us with weight of my arms and the tightness of my grip. “Nothing is ever as it seems, life is a Hell of a lot easier when you let go, the wind will speak lullabies into your heart, the water will carry you with safe passage” Cara spoke. I didn’t recognize this version of her. What I knew her to be was practical and mathematically inclined, even saavy in computer technology. Mysterious and cryptic was just not who I imagined her to be.

But just then… mere moments after she spoke her poetry into the air, the world around appeared to swell. The shadows of the trees, the reflection of the moon, the greatness of the earth braced themselves for the howling wind and cacophony of leaves and voices that unleashed unto the night. At this point, I am both totally freaked out and sincerely excited, was this magic?!

Cara and I broke out in childlike laughter and we began embracing one another. My hand on the small of her back, her palms on either of my cheeks and we kissed with what the spirit offered to us, in the off beaten wonder. Our kiss was passionate and deep. I lost myself in the moment, stilling my breath but racing my heart.

Once we parted, we started a long slow trail to where we were before. Perhaps Cara was familiar as she seemed intent on the path through woods. I don’t know what it was about that night, and nothing like it has happened again but I do know that whatever magic or lunacy accompanied that night in October was not easily captured but even harder was it to forget.