Who was I before you called my name?

She gives each shadow in the room a name, as she lay there twisting restless, half buried in the mountain range of crumpled sheets and scattered pillows, down deep as her body sails across the recently discovered territory of her second hand futon. Her foot glides down across my shin, her shoulder pins down my left arm, i'm wedged there between her and the wall, nothing else to do but follow the curve of her back, shafts of light shift from the window and spread across the tattoo's that map her spine with stories she has'nt told me yet.
"Jesse!" She calls out and points to the tree branch shillouette swaying on the ceiling. I nod, forgetting that she has her back to me.
"Hypatia" she says turning her whispers into silk that melt across her breath. A finger rises over the horizon of her body and I see her signal out the shadow of a bouquet of brushes sitting in an old tin can.
"Daniel" swinging her finger in the air like a dueling blade against an unseen opponent, she slashes towards the potted Wandering Jew hanging in the corner, I look and see it's shade peek out of the corner of it's leaves. I reach over with my free arm, and my fingers trace the scarlet and yellow ink petals on her, a chakra garden frozen on the canvas of her skin.
"Dominique" she says
"Angelle" she says
"Joshua" she says, but my eyes can only see her, i'm locked. My fingers caress her flowers, she shivers quick and shifts her weight into a soft press against me. She turns her face towards mine, hyacinth eyes painting a gentle heat across the space between us.
"And what then shall I call you?" she asks me with a smile.

Blake at the gates of hell

"Here he is - reach me my things - I shall keep my eye on him. There he comes! his ever eager tongue whisking out of his mouth, a cup in his hands to hold blood and covered with a scaly skin of gold and green." ~William Blake


William Blake
Ghost of a flea
1819


William Blake & fellow artist and friend William Varley, would indulge in the occasional seance or two. Blake used these excursions into the spirit world as an artistic exercises; sketching portraits and profiles live from the land of the dead. During one of these visitations into the spiritrealm Blake ran into a 'malign' presence, which declared itself the 'Ghost of a Flea'. "Blake claimed that, while he was sketching the flea, it had explained to him that fleas were inhabited by the souls of bloodthirsty men. These bloodthirsty men were confined to the bodies of small insects, because if they were the size of horses, they would drink so much blood that most of the country would be depopulated."
~ Tate Gallery, UK
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/blakeinteractive/imagin/cast_02.html