A short story..!

She feeds on words, and moonlight, and dreams.

I met her once, a friend of a friend
and a most fascinating nightmare.
A girl, a shadow, with skin the color of teak
and eyes molten gold. Lovely and mesmerizing,
she is the most terrible and beautiful creature
I’ve ever seen and quite what I wished to be.
Thriving on turning men to ash and embers.
Telling fortunes in the smoke of those
she has burned once the fire dies.

I do not remember her name.
But I can feel it on the tip of my tongue
when I hear thunder clap in the night
and I know she stalks for prey.
I can almost hear her voice in the heart
of burning campfire logs and the igniting
of a match head.
I met her too few times, in a bar
I can no longer visit.
It smelled of bad memories,
the wood tables stained and soaked
with spilled alcohol and likely to burn down
if just the right spark caught as it did one night.
Perhaps she was the culprit, I never asked.
She played with a Zippo lighter more often
than not though I never saw her smoke,
and drank Fireball whiskey straight.
I never saw her drunk and her words
always remained cool on her pointed red tongue.

Our conversations were always hushed, long,
vague and partially said.
We knew what the other meant and never pressed
too far or revealed too much for words are heavy
and we had to carry them away with us when
we parted, alone.
She knew my reputation and never pried, never said
a misstep, speaking and listening in equal measure.
I adored her stories, brief as they were; they felt
like legends and reminded me of her age being
well beyond my own.
Often she spoke of vindication, vengeance, hunting
and catching her prey, and I knew the feelings well.
Her skin was tantalizing in the warm bar light,
smooth and smoky as her voice with long expressive
hands speaking as much as her mouth and
I knew why so many men fell prey to her charms.
Perhaps she never stole me away because
I never looked into her eyes, amber and honey
and fire like mine could be in sunlight,
and she respected my distance and caution.
Predators do best to not hunt one another.

Even as she would flatter me, coax me
to share tales of my own, I preferred her
to speak in her cinnamon accent and to see her
teeth bright and sharp in her angular face
when she smiled in memory.
Of men, so many men, melting at that smile
or those eyes or her hands on their arm.
By dawn, they were blackened bones
and tarred flesh, burned away in the beginning
of the day. She took all their stories,
all their dreams, stealing away the pieces
that made their souls and ate the hearts
as dessert.
For thousands upon thousands of nights,
she has fed on their words and hearts,
the lies of the drunk and the sob stories
of the lonely. Sometimes women too followed
her into the night, but most knew to fear her
by the prickle of gooseflesh she raised as
she passed them that the men seemed
 not to notice.

I liked her.
I miss her sometimes, and I wish I remembered
her name or if she even told me.
I always miss friends and enemies
with wonderful stories and wicked needs
and clever tongues.
The dangerous ones are far better company.