The Lavender Garden.

The heady scent of lavender filled the sparkling evening air,

perfuming and saturating her green silk dress,

her tousled, long red hair.

She wandered through the garden, then ran through rows of

purple flowers

to escape the hordes of wedding guests, the joyful party-goers.

For Myshka was sad.

Unaware of her distress, the late-shift bees continued their work,

gently letting her pass unhurt.

She sat down on the welcoming, sun-baked earth

not heeding the dusty stones and dirt.

She looked up.

Ancient oaks stood starkly silhouetted against a blue and peachy sky;

a sunset-softened church remained forbidden and unused.

Myshka looked within herself and wished

she could fly.

Back to him, to Yuri, her most secret and forbidden love.

She thought of him wistfully, longingly, knowing he was far away,

tucked up in the sheets of his domesticity,

in his southern cottage on the moonlit bay

where they had laughed and loved.

She remembered....

He’d worn his blue-eyed anguish like a just and righteous penance,

absorbing every wound she’d hurled into his tortured mind.

He’d watched her slowly dance:

he’d realised he had been blind.

Blind to her secrets, blind to his thoughts, failing to see the truth,

 then, unleashing  a thousand sorrows, he had opened Pandora’s box.

He saw imagined scenes of mockery

 instead  of the twisted, tangled history.

 He may have been mislead.

 Surely mislead, by the hurricane of wild thoughts that swept through

his heart.

Myshka’s spirit fractured. She floundered.

 Unsure where to start.

He’d sat so still, so quiet, surrounded by the

soft, red glow of desire....

....submitted to her spell, and dragged himself from the mire

of his desolation.

He turned his thoughts to images of sweet, pure passion,

and swept aside the tide of bitter indecision

which threatened this promised union

of bodies and souls.

They had been quite alone, willingly drowning in her white-hot fire.

The woman felt the twilight wrap itself around her

melancholic  mind,

and she gazed up at the stars,  hoping to find

the answer in the heavens.

She tasted the salty tang of tears as they flowed down

her cool, tanned face,

imagining herself in that other place,

where he suffered in silence.

The same kindly moon looked down upon her paramour

but failed to nurse him to the shore

of dreamtime.

 Guilt-wrapped and feverish thoughts raced through his head,

so he rose,  rejecting the bed

of matrimonial comfort, and gazed at the sea.

The orderly garden of his life had become a wild and fierce wilderness,

where he did not wish to be.

He remembered her dance.

As if in a trance, he floated back in time, to Saratov,

the night that Myshka stole his heart

 and fired his soul, inspired his art

as no other had done.

Her silky, slow adagio, her dream-like glissade would stay

in his mind until his final day.

Carabosse indeed. Her spell was cast,

and Yuri was enveloped in a cloak of darkest

obsession.

He fought with fierce and furious

jealousy, yet insatiably curious

about the black and red and vicious web

within which he was trapped.
His rage surged and merged
with the vengeance he desired.

Another lover?

How could she love another?
He hated her, he loved her too.

Murderous thoughts of criminal acts and violent actions came and went, but killed
his ballet dancer, in his angry mind.
Her slender, white throat scarlet and slit, her life-blood spilled?

her treacherous heart shot and filled

with lead?

Her toxic love stilled

and silenced for ever?

To see her cold, quiet and exquisite corpse on a cold and quiet

marble slab?

His Myshka; his precious one, his wicked, wild and wanton

woman.

He hoped.....

Such a powerful connection could not be broken,

such vital words not left unspoken.

Thoughts of Myshka filled his life,

twisting and turning like a burning knife

and piercing his very soul.

Thoughts of Yuri encompassed her dreams

and rendered her sleepless , untold

hours of remorse, contrition spent weeping....

The dancer returned to her artist, like a moth to a flame,

and meekly accepted the blame

for his dark and dreadful despair.

The artist turned to his dancer, stroked her amber hair

and kissed her gently.

.

Barefoot in her grave.

Into her grave she rushed, her dead face flushed
with excitment and fulfillment.
She was late.
One moment longer in the warm and sanguineous world,
that throbbing,breathing land of living flesh,
and her undead life would end.

Descending into her crumbling casket, a slip of a ghostly whisp
that softly eased itself between the cool marble and the maternal earth,
she settled quietly, embracing the comforting stillness
and womb-like darkness of her tomb.

Closing those dark-ringed, death-fringed and desecrated eyes,
she sighed and smiled, her swollen, inflamed lips slowly opening,
revealing the glittering, blood-tipped
wolfen teeth.
As her heavy lids lowered, she sank into the non-sleep of the sad
and dreadful spirit that has been sucked from humanity.
Remembering, relishing the intense intoxication,
the deadly decadence and
the exciting thrill of the chase....

Quietly, she entered the bar,
the densely packed crowd thrummed with heat and life, pulsating and tempting her,
saturating her predatory senses, exciting her desire and igniting
the age-old fire in her hungry, soulless heart.
From the very start,
in the early days of Budapest,
in the shadow of the castle, along the riverbank,
the midnight skies and men's dying cries would make
her ice-blue eyes turn red.
From the dark green depths of Carpathian forests,
she moved onwards in time, in place,
east to west, an unwelcome guest
in each new land, her fabulous face
seducing, enchanting those hapless fools
who succumbed to her power,
not knowing their hour
had come.

Still further back, back to the pale young novice
escaping the strict, cloistered safety of St Bernadett's convent,
fleeing for one fatal moment
the silence and prayers;
a moment darkly sweet, as she kissed that
tall stranger, embracing her vampiric epiphany
whilst the wolves howled a sorrowful symphony
through the most blissful and blackest of nights.
Crimson visions soared before her innocent eyes,
lifting the curtain of lies
spun by the Sisters.
Her awakening was complete;
Anastazia, eternally damned in a swift heartbeat,
submitted her soul and welcomed the abyss.

The past faded away, her need for blood directing her, propelling her
through the crowd, to the tall, fair youth,
his untasted wine half-way to his open mouth
as he saw her approach.
Her ageless face and sensual lips
held him enraptured, captured his heart, as she brushed his cheek
with her fingertips;
holding his gaze in the maze of her whirlpool eyes,
she allowed him to wonder and fantasise
of delights yet to come.

Hypnotised by this harbinger of hell, he fell
in with her step, her shiny red heels guiding him out of the bar
onto the cobblestones of Hope Street,
her sweet perfume
stunning him into complete submission.
His forgotten guitar lay alone and unplayed amongst the noise
and the music of the students' bar. A lonely reminder of artistic promise
and promises unkept.
The scent of musk and gardenia filled the damp Liverpool air
as she led him on, the austere cathedral looming and forbidding,
yet she dared to ensnare him....
She glanced up at the floodlit tower, and laughed defiantly,
carressing the young man's face with her cool, soft hand, bringing his mouth
down to hers.
Such a kiss, such bliss, his eyes closed and he sighed....

She sank those sharp teeth into his soft, white skin,
hearing the startled surprise in his sudden gasp.
Then felt his unbridled lust as he clasped
her to his chest, his musician's hands searching for her silk-clad breast,
sinful images filling his mind, and without knowing why
he submitted to this tall stranger.
Such joy, such violent passion surged through his body, every nerve aflame.
She drank deeply.
He felt his life fading, his eyes dimming, heartbeat slowing
as he looked into those glowing,
red eyes. Confusion. Despair.
Allowing his slim, limp body to crumple to the ground, she left him
to die.

The church clock struck six.
The sky lightened in the east, a priest rushed by,
late for early mass....
She discarded those pretty and stolen red shoes,
left them in the rain and ran,

returning again to the graveyard, dodging the lovers and other
seekers of solitude.
She fled past the cathedral door, nevermore
to enter a holy place.
Finding her tomb, she stopped.
The autumn sun
peeped over the Georgian terraces of Toxteth,
and she quickly slipped out of sight, the brightness
of dawn issuing its stern warning of the dangers of morning.
And so she slept,
barefoot in her grave.