A Homage to Her

She was magic.

Her beat followed no other. Her heart led a torrid dance with her mind, forming a beguiling intelligence that spared nothing and no one from its power… not even herself.

I recall the musical notes of her laughter, a promising melody that would pirouette around me, around us … disorienting the most hardened of hearts, cajoling our obedience to her unconventional will.

She was magic. Utter magic. And I loved her. I loved her terribly.

Ingeniously negotiating a place for herself in a reality mistrusting of female deviance, she held my hand as I bid farewell to my childhood. And innocently, without even understanding the depths of her influence, she brightened the way by simply being. She demonstrated how to reconcile projected femininity with mischievous curiosity. She used her cunning wit to pacify the struggle between personal callings and societal demands. And she, stargazing, walked on before me, clearing the thorns of uncertainty as I edged closer and closer to the daunting reality of womanhood. Her joy and laughter warming me, coaxing me to move on, to move forward, and to trust whatever the horizon offers.

And I followed. I followed her because she was the only one worth following.

A devout disciple is what she had in me.

But time wore on, and she wore out. As I moved across my youthful threshold and discarded my apprehensions, she stumbled more and more, her haggard silhouette no longer exuding confidence. Her laughter silenced. Her innocence raided.

I saw her panic as the thorny and girthy vines treaded around her, overpowering her strides, her momentum. I felt her hopelessness as she saw her convictions dismembered with each prick. I witnessed, in her slouched shoulders, resignation as she contemplated renouncing her magic — her magic that she finally acknowledged only as it receded from her fading hands — in exchange for empty peace.

My heart breaks.

Her heart breaks.

I am lost without her.