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The shadow energies seem to be a part of the human psyche, a part of its 360-degree nature, and the shadow energies become destructive only when they are ignored.
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She woke up before I did.
She had pulled on her dress. Her panties lay in the floor between us. A shoulder slid out, and I saw she pull her dress back up. I wondered, briefly, if she could even reach the hooks, or even if I had ripped something, not being attentive enough.
I must have made a noise. She never hesitated, never flinched, never stopped running her fingers across the tops of my books -- Blake, Lawrence, Yeats. She made me want to pull her back in with me, into the warmth of the sheets.
As I say, though, she must have heard me. I barely heard her. "Are we us, now?" Her hand stopped, then, resting on a shelf. Ridiculously, I said nothing, and watched instead the imitation human skull on my nightstand.
She turned her head, a roughly bound ponytail bouncing slightly. I couldn't keep looking away. Behind wet eyes, for a moment, it looked as if she had gone out. There was a pause.
"I don't remember anything," she said.
Her eyes were infinitely sad.
She knelt beside me, a pink knee against the pallor of the sheets. Now, when the dress slipped, she left it, a shoulder joining the knee. She shivered. I pulled her against me, wrapped the blanket around us, and we held each other for warmth.
It was the closest I had yet felt to her.
We spent the day together. I remembered what it felt like to be in love, envied the guys she will no doubt be meeting in coming years, who will sweep her off her feet.
As we approached her house, she told me she had better go on ahead. For the first time that day, we kissed. Her mouth was willing, if faltering, still tasting dimly of ice cream, but a late milk-tooth caused her to wince, and I let her go.
She didn't tell me what she was going to say. I didn't ask; I didn't want to know.
She didn't look back.
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