A first kiss in the moonlight. Over-the-top, syrupy romanticism … but so much fun to write! (Opium refers to a brand of perfume.)

[In perfect union,
Breathed the heavenly bodies above;
One cascading dreamy incandescence,
Upon the other’s fly-by-night love.]

Like a pale blue pasture,
Sheeting through the long-leaf pines,
The moon’s light shone upon her body;
Her face fluoresced before mine.

Like sparkling waning crescents
(Evening’s crowning celestial beams),
Her eyes were a study in focus and passion,
Hesitant jewels that twinkled green.

Bathed in gentle, loving rays,
She explored with soft, tender caress,
While the shifting warmth in her heart,
Remained a crime of passion unconfessed.

Alas, a stolen romance in her hands
(A trace of Opium upon her wrists),
She leaned into the faraway moonscape,
And sealed my fate with a kiss.

A Renoir when rekindled,
But one query looms in my picture:
Was that ‘deed a sparkle in her eye,
Or merely a firefly’s flicker?