i have been roland, beowulf, achilles, gilgamesh; i have been called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the world goes dim and cold. i am a hero.

she has been nameless since our birth; a constant adversary, caring for nothing but my ruin, a sword drenched in my blood; forever my greatest and only love. she is the dark one; the enemy and lover without whom my very existence would be pathetic and vulgar. her eyes steam and boil in the night (she is fantastically beautiful yet i cannot stand the sight of her). our relationship is complex and perhaps eternal.

we met once in the garden, at the beginning of the world and unaware of our twin destinies (not the garden of Genesis, but another; forgotten, untended and now choked with weeds, unvisited except for ourselves). we matched stares across a dry fountain, and i recall her smiling at me before she devoured the lawn and trees with a translucent blue flame and tore flagstones from the path and hurled them into the sky screaming my sins.

our reunions there are epic battles fought without quarter, often in the dark as the moon is seldom visible and the sun never. i powder a granite monument in a soundless flash, showering the grass with molten drops of its gold inlay, sending smoking chips of stone skipping into the fog. she splinters an ancient oak with a force that takes my breath and hurls me to the ground. she leaves and i lie in the slow rain of burning slivers of wood, staring at the low, dark clouds, craving our next meeting.