“Her physical beauty had initially caught my attention, but it was her spirit that imprisoned my heart and soul forever. ”
 Helen Boswell, Mythology: The Wicked

He had come to her
As he had
In her other lives.
In times of peril,
He had been there
To bolster her,
To encourage her,
To give her hope.
To love her as he always had.
He had watched her born,
Grow, age, and die,
Only to be reborn again;
And he had followed her,
Drawn by
The threads that had bound them
Since time immortal.
But always
She had been of flesh and blood
While he had been...
Of another kind.
At one time she had been
A peasant girl
When pestilence ravaged the land,
Another time an intrepid journalist
Rooting out corruption;
In another life she had been
A homeless woman
Beset with mental illness,
Who had perished
In a Nazi concentration camp
Where she had spoken often
Of “her angel” nearby
And in so doing
Heartened others
Who would go on to live.
Once she had been
A fierce warrior queen
Defending her people,
While in another, a nurse
Who had treated the wounded
In southeast Asia.
But in each life,
No matter her circumstance,
She had remained
Who and what she was:
A beautiful soul
Of light and grace,
One with the power
To draw him
From the darkness
Into which he'd been born
And to which he had been bred.
She alone
Had had the power
To draw the goodness within him
And save him from damnation,
For when he found her,
He had found the strength
To escape the abyss
And know the love
For which he'd been meant.
And so, throughout the centuries
He had stayed close to her side
Yet separated by what they were;
Except when she slept.
Then he would go to her
And they would share themselves
In ways they could not
In her waking hours.
She knew him each time
They met in her dreams
And spent those precious hours
Loving
Only as mated souls do.
Yet when she awoke
She remembered him only
As a dream.

c. 2024