Dark Women

Dark women enchant me. Women such as have a gaze which is fixed and strong, and which communicates an understanding of things beyond the ordinary. Things I do not know. From whom I must softly petition to know their secrets.

You’ll note I didn’t say I love dark women. I’ve been truly in love one time in my life, and the woman I loved wasn’t dark in any sense of the term. And I’ve come to know, perhaps belatedly, that one can never really know with whom they’ll fall in love. It’s a thing that happens for reasons we don’t really understand. Like the Tao. If we think we understand it, it probably isn’t love.

Yet, there is love, and then there is that other thing. That fierce madness which consumes one, that unreasoning obsession, that fire in the mind that keeps one awake at night and dominates all thought during the day.

I know two such women. One knows how I feel, but it’s hopeless. The other doesn’t know, and it’s even more so. But I think of them always. And it is them I have in mind whenever I write of how a man feels about a woman. I think of her dark, languid eyes; the gentle line of her lips; the brilliant flash of a smile directed at me; the smoky melody of her words; the color of her skin, as pale as Carrara marble. I simply want to place my mouth upon her arm to feel its cool translucence upon my lips.

And, of course, her dark, dark hair hanging to her shoulders. It evokes reveries that are not merely erotic. I don’t know why, but it bespeaks of things of which I am but vaguely aware. A knowledge that goes beyond my understanding. And I must know of these things.

Each woman would regard me as an absolute fool. I’m certain neither has patience with a dreamer. Which is basically what I am. A writer. A dreamer. A poor lover in love with improbable visions which cannot be in this world.

And yet, . . . somewhere. .