Of the women I've known she was the hardest to decipher. But then I couldn't stop trying. She was beautiful, a word that normally isn't specific enough but in this case was the word that everyone used when they met her. She existed on another plane, as if beauty itself, in a kind of Platonic way, just fell on her, then reflected out toward the rest of us. She didn't care.

Everything about her body radiated warmth and yet at the same time her eyes, a deep, dark amber, showed a guarded pain that said don't bother, I've seen it all, there's nothing you have that I haven't seen before.

Yet every now and then she would show a kind of tenderness and let you be close to her, if only for a minute. Most likely you were the one who just happened to be there at that moment. It was nothing personal. She was just reflecting on a childhood memory before walking away.

I longed to touch her and now and then she would let me, when she would let me softly brush her neck, the strong, tall neck of a prima ballerina. To feel that ramrod strength in such a creature made me feel that I was connecting to a pulsing underground river, a force more powerful than you, life itself, inevitable, merciless, and terrifying.

At times like this I would be close enough to see what only a lover can see, the beauty up close, in the sprouting energy of her dark walnut mane of hair. The folds of her ears, larger than expected, when from a distance they fell into perspective, much as Michelangelo’s David. If She let me, I would let my hand gently slide down from her neck to her chest, where while she felt nothing, I would nearly faint from the pleasure of such a wrought sculpture.

And then, the moment would be gone. She would walk away as if nothing had happened. I would walk into the barn and grab another flake of hay for her and her brother, and return to the land of humans until the next opportunity might present itself.