Between moonlight and candlelight, the shadows play like living things, chasing their tails in dancing circles. Dark swallows light, and light paints dark, until they are not separate, but merge into one entity.
She stands there, bright flesh and darkened eyes full of shadows and and a smile full of secrets, challenging him to join the game. Can he catch a shadow or ride a moonbeam as it flits over her skin? Watch her eyes follow the laughing veils the candle throws over him. Is that her hand reaching for him, or an errant ribbon of light that lost its way in the wandering obscurities? He can feel which when fingertips close the darkness between her shadow and his, leaving warmth like a heartbeat upon his cheek.
Silken streamers of silver beams become arms around his waist. Faces are eclipsed by each other's closeness as lips meet and are lost in rivers of golden hair and night's own fingers. Obscured by the paths of heated hands, skin tingles with inner fire before light claims its dancefloor once more over twining bodies and fresh memories. Safe in the spangled veils of the moon and her shady embrace, secrets are lived, and kept, tied in black satin shadows and pearled stars, captured in a room full of dimness and candles, a gift from the night to the shimmering laughter of lovers.

©Sonja Torres 2001