Innocence unsullied is ignorance. Bowable, bendable, malleable; a flutter and rush on the wind's whim, fragrant hail in encircling breeze. Laughing that one stands, in unsuspicious pleasure aat its bang-lifting sweep, oblivious to its bizarre preciseness, its delicate and hesitant sel-control. I stand by, waiting for the realization that never comes; and as the gentle hurricane drifts softly to the ground in the wake of its eye, I bow my heak and understand. No, the eye of the blushing storm is too innocent for my possesing, still governed by the latent trust of a childhood never realized. I cannot willfully mar something so pure, nor can I willfully love it. My naivete must be a tempered one--Ferdinand and not Miranda.

You understand that, do you not? Tempests have blown your life astray aas they have mine, yet still you smile and play, checkmate bloodshed with purit and announce a draw. Shroud yourself in violets, Ophelia: they have not withered all yet, despite the efforts of your comrades. Does that florists' shop contain rosemary, I wonder?

Forgive me. I speak too much in symbolism. It is a consequence you woud also understand. I know it, that feeling. I share it: suspended alone in an endless void, stars of early morning hanging around you as you slide derictionlessly down an endless web of luminescent binary. Your eyes scrolling the sky-coloured fluorescence for something Longfellow lost. Searching for that prayer you drew long ago, that desperate hope from which the string has long since ceased quivering.

Ask me, I beg you, for I know where it fell!

I have it! It is mine! It came to me. The same winds that lifted the innocent's hair caught it, turned it, marked it for my breast. It found me and it cleft me. The wound need not have been so deep. but the wind impelled it, made it so; and some histant self-control drove it further into the gash. It is unremovable. An ever-fixed mark, compass to compassion, point of dark direction in a blizzaed of fragmented patel. I am grateful for its security. But even so, it need not have hewn so deep! A touch would have been enough. For that is how you work, isn't it? Beware, Hamlet, the tip is poisoned!

How subversive of you. Checkmate, and a good game indeed. You always fing the way around things. How does one cleave that which is phyically unassailabe? Your answer is the only right one: Do not cleave the material. Do not destroy the physical. Leave it unscathed. Instead, detour to the interior: hinder the soul. Tender the mind incapable, and the body is helpless. And you--strategist! tactician! genius!--have found the best way, the only way, to do it.

Eros's way. Eros's weapon. Eros's poson. A shot into the air, yes--but an accurate one. You have fulfilled your mission. The toxin is at once agonizing and wonderful. I understand, now, that mysterious affiliation between pain and pleasure that so often enthralls my comrades; and now I welcome the burning sensation that comes when I imagine your shop, your invisible robe of violets.

You have accomplished more than you inteded, I think. What I would give for you to realize it! For you to understand it!

For you to respond...

I will guide the shot. I will dictate its path. You need only draw. You need only aim.

Target your reflection, Eros.