{poem + story} you smell like moonlight on my skin.

your bared moonlit hands
on my bared moonlit skin
on my purest more sacred thoughts
on my purest faithfulness
and i, a never-ending necklace of your slow kissing lips
pausing only for a breathing

spirit breathing
prayer of your hands

in the church of skin
you and i forever always

A little more:

There is something so romantic, so mystical about the moonlit nights. Even if we are not outside, through the veils of our curtains, blue light enters our room and spreads itself across our skins, and across our minds and feelings. It is lingering, and close, while away. Like love. Because love is a knowing not of flesh, but through the flesh. Beneath the shroud of our skins, something weaves in and of ourselves, and while lovers may not know when exactly their love began, they certainly know it has begun. Perhaps it began from a time before time beyond time. Or in a dream, that then wrapped beautifully around our entire body after we opened our eyes. Or was it in a knowing, from childhood. Maybe it lived in a song we once heard, or a story we once read. Maybe that’s where we held it. Maybe it was a remembering, or an invitation for a deepening. Or maybe it all began when two strangers’ eyes met, one hot summer night on a little Greek island in the Cyclades, and it was as if we had known each for our entire lives.

And then: I carry your heart in my heart. Then. Now. Always.

Have you witnessed water actually begin? Is it vapour, snow, river? Or it is when we turned on the faucet. Or when we lifted a rock in a dry land, and accidently discovered a fresh spring – like a secret which suddenly opened our desert.

Perhaps we were always looking for it. Our eyes shifting towards horizons, as if we were waiting for something, longing for something, searching for something. What was it? Sometimes we think we found it, recognizing parts of it in others, but somehow it is never quite the *it*. It is close but not enough. And then the secret threads of moonlight lead along the intuitive pathways of the lands. In these mystical lands, only our heart can lead us. Only our heart can see clearly amidst the dark nights, tall trees and unclear lakes. We may doubt ourselves but we just have no other way than to follow what we feel within.

And then one day, we stay before the landscape that embodies everything we’ve ever felt and known, the echoes that we once as if heard in the distances swell into the sound itself, into a voice, and we know:

This is the one I was made for.        

About the moon:

In esotericism and tarot philosophy, the Moon is associated with the psychic realms and the emotional watery realms. It is a distant untouched thing, yet it moves us as if it’s within us, with its mystical hands. The tides too move because of the moon. Our hearts move too. The moon is a threshold connecting the two worlds: the physical and the unseen. And like love, it is a threshold to a new level of consciousness and deep understanding. The moon symbolizes the unconscious aspect of the feminine: changeable, moist, dark, seductive, and possessing a mystical attraction.

There are two aspects of love: the masculine and the feminine. The masculine quality of love is the word, the fiery sword, the initiative, the one who says, “I love you. I want you. I need you.” The feminine is the moist soil, the good mud, the bottom of the well, the scent of the back legs of the wild red fox at night, the mystic, the longing, the yearning. The feminine is memory itself. She whispers in the ears of her beloved, the one whose soul knows her, she whispers, “I am waiting for you. I desire you. I am longing for you.” He is the hands that dig into the mud, without even the hope of ever finding her, and yet he digs tirelessly, unguardedly, persistently, undoubtedly. Until his love awakens her, finds her, and she opens for him. 

Sometimes things can appear dark, doubtful, bewitching and unknown in the emotional and spiritual wildlands, but we follow our senses. It is like taking a shower in the dark, perhaps only with a small tea candle flickering its flame on the other side of the curtain. As the water flows, we follow the sensations, and we learn to navigate, to feel and see in the dark.

Yes, sometimes, things can appear dark, doubtful, bewitching and unknown in the emotional and spiritual wildlands, when we are in the forests at night, but love is a kingdom for the brave.

Love is also a remembering.

The Hebrew letter associated with the Moon is Kof, or Kuf, (ק). It is the first letter of the word קְדוּשָׁה (kdusha) holiness, and it therefore means “holy”. Love is holy. Love is sacred. It is a temple between two people. It is the seed of God, and through the love of two people a new soul is born: the soul of the relationship, which then blesses everyone else. Love is a prayer and it prays us into being. Every human tie, every relationship into which we enter wholebodily and wholeheartedly, dissolves us into profound love. Boundaries dissolve and we can finally really see each other. When we pursue the unknown pathways illuminated by the moon, we are essentially following the call of our soul. Kof is also associated with the part of our brain that is connected to intuition, and subconscious reactions such as sneezing. It is also known as the “needle’s eye” and I often think that it is through a needle’s eye that we can still see very clearly the distant unseen things, when our senses are sharpened. It is a human path we walk, through the gates of invisibility, and into the worlds of the all-encompassing, the truly meaningful, the worlds of love. Trust the timing of your life. Trust your desires. And wherever love calls you to go, go. Go.

Me in Ios, Greece