Was she a woman or a muse, the one who fled through the streets of the city center? Her silhouette, outlined by the flickering glow of the streetlights, seemed to float between mist and stone, between reality and delirium. She ran with alarmed malice, her steps sparking lightning, a feverish fusion of fire and beauty that set the cobblestones ablaze. I saw her, as if she were an omen, a burning breath of unbearable fate. I asked myself then—what was the fabulous and cursed story of that woman?

She passed me like a whirlwind of mystery, dragging into the night a heavy and blazing symbol, leaving in the air a perfume of almost mad purity. In her eyes, the mortal gleam of someone who fears nothing anymore—because she has already lost everything. She was hopelessly in love. But that love was an abyss, a sentence. Running was useless, and yet she ran—as if speed could deceive the inevitable.

That woman was the embodiment of all blind passions, a divine echo of immortal tragedies. A desperate goddess, trying to escape a fate that already weighed upon her shoulders. She ran, bleeding with hatred and desire, leaving a trail of fire in the endless night. A trembling thread of flame flickering in the darkness.

She was an apparition. A wounded arrow. A story of fire in the soul, of obsessive love and immense loneliness. The world seemed to tremble beneath her feet as she slipped through the mist, a shadow on the verge of dissolving. I watched her death-laden body vanish at the corner of ancient walls, taking with her a delirious scream—an echo rising from the darkness of a shattered throat.

A mere fraction of a second was enough for her existence to sear itself into my memory like a branding iron. Since that night, I lie down and rise with her. I baptized her with her own name. And I continue to feed on the fever of that vision—because fevered muses are perfect for a poet’s inspiration. ❤️

©️ Beatriz Esmer