Tender Is The Night In Its Mysterious Pallor

It’s under the mysterious pallor of the moon that she comes alive,
When she lies in her bed carelessly, her legs suspended on her bedside window sill, as though to feel fragments of calming moonlight through her toes in her semi-charmed body,
When the savagery of words fades and all that she can hear is the voice of her soul, comforting her like a living hymn,
When she shuts her eye to the vivid details of the turmoil without, of her half-consumed grief, of her caged dreams, trapped in another’s world.

It’s under the mysterious pallor of the moon that she is untouched,
In her own neverland where her bare stomach breathes, her arms stretching on for eternity, her blooming body hers — and hers only.
She looks at herself in her wardrobe mirror; all she wants to do is wrap herself in a flimsy cloak,
Of rainbow colours and marshmallow embellishments; a failed attempt perhaps, to seize her slipping childhood in the confines of her nightly solitude.

It’s under the mysterious pallor of the moon that she is lost,
Naked as she came, resting in anonymity, stripped of her gender, color, religion, caste and class.
Oblivious to the unmatched, brutal labels the world gave her on saying ‘No’ — cunt, tease, slut, prude, narcissist, bitch, humorless, crude, brazen.
In the violet-blue veil of night, she need not avert her face to ignore the piercing eyes of the world, telling her that she has no right to her body, that it has already been contaminated no matter how much she tries to hide it.

It’s under the mysterious pallor of the moon that she is found,
Dancing to the tunes of her love ballads, swaying covetously with her hands up in the air,
Sometimes stopping, sitting, staring at her invisible wings, like a fallen angel.
Her will by moonlight wears the fluid fabric to her soul, clinging to her voice; a stark contrast to how it responds to her in daylight — frigid, limp, contorting and bending to the force of others.

And with the moonlight gone and the soft golden rays ushering in the dawn, to her what feels like a black glowering stare,
She rises reluctantly to the slow beatings of her purple heart, as a struggle against being drowned.
The day to her is the sea in tempestuous, tidal forces coming to rob her greedily of her physical manifesto, demanding her silence, illuminating all her fresh and fading scar lines — a one-way street to being a woman... never to be a child again.
Of course all she cares for is moonlight, where she is safe within her monastery of solitude — like a velvety lake, shimmering and still.