she hurts the things she loves (Collaboration with John Feddeler, Part I)

Young. she’s much too young, I thought, & I am but a gigolo    
who would taint the flower of her innocence. but her eyes,    
her lips; her small hands, delicate cousins of the rain. too    
young, she is, & I am much too weak.    
   
there are men who detest the sordid, who are repelled by the    
shame.  but I?  I caress the sordid; I embrace the shame.    
   
she stood on the bridge: the Bridge of Sighs, we called it. I    
approached timidly, & inquired if she was waiting for her    
lover. she remained silent, & revealed the smile she had    
liberated from Mona Lisa.    
   
and so we stood upon the bridge, two strangers, gazing at the    
water, the almost imperceptible splashes on the surface. it may    
have been the moon, tossing her precious luna stones from the    
strange, soft cradle of her arms, made more precious as she    
gave them away. or the heart, as it breaks into little pieces.    
   
her beauty was so enrapturous that I was caught in the snares    
she cast out with nothing more than her mere proximity. I turned    
her toward me, firmly; my lips fell upon hers in what I patrolled    
as a kiss, but perhaps there was another name for it in hell.    
   
she resisted for a moment; for another moment or two,    
she acquiesced, & our heartbeats became a cantata    
of exquisite rhythm.    
   
suddenly, she pushed away; she regarded me with candle-flame    
eyes, perhaps not of anger or regret, yet it impaled me. this was    
her terrible swift sword of retribution, & she carried it in her eyes,    
and in her heart.    
   
‘I’m going home now,’ she said, a brigadier’s words in a meadowlark’s    
voice. ‘don’t follow me.’ I watched her depart, as my heart abandoned    
me, & trailed along in her shadow…