Shiva Leaving

When the time came for leaving, I clung on at the elbow in the lamp light to the words she had just spoken, a few random words, but spoken in sweet whispers as she led me away. Through the sweeping streets in the sloping maze of churches and palm boulevards, down dark and ominous alleys, along cool stone walls, through silent shadows in the ambit of the bell tower under its eaves and red clay roofs. A distant musician plucked his guitar and the sounds tickled me with a strange anxiety as if all the people asleep in their beds were dead. Her voice had killed them. Her soft voice. Shiva was talking and had not seen me or this place. Now I could no longer deny that I loved her and why did it take so long, such an impossible time.