I met a muse who was born a goddess. She played down her powers until she met me. She served me eternal wine, promised barrels of honey. The original apple, she said, was mislabeled: a classic case of failed marketing. The apple was nothing but the right breast of Eve, a metaphor lost on uncreative men. And no woman cared to explain.

I hope to meet my heroine among the newcomers, before I deplete my energy or worse yet, stay untapped and left to rust. I will find the biggest forest on the planet, set it on fire, and launch my worries and doubts crashing into its center. My heroine is out there, but I’m not sure where, or which country she belongs to, or what century she comes from. What books have her name? Whether the ocean could preserve our fingerprints.

I plant promises for the music to outdo silence, and for love to outshine the sun. If that is not commitment, the sky must be an illusion. The mountains will need to flatten themselves and absorb their dwellers’ meditations.

My heroine is out there and I swear to furnish the night for her. To serve her the spring on the palms of my long arms. With her grace, we will fill the front pages of newspapers, tap into the talisman’s secret channels, and rearrange the letters of alphabets.

My heroine and I will open a school for lovers, and ask them to dress poets in rare silk, or exotic feathers, from obscure islands; urge them to melt the world’s literature and apply its ink to their eyelashes. In the humanities, a new discipline will be inaugurated.