Eléni & M Move to Athens - Part 17

This new series has its history in the form of several short stories, several poems, and a 13-part series that is linked at the bottom via Part 16 of this series. Anthi Psomiadou has graciously agreed—I keep repeating it—to appear again and again as a fictional character called, Anthi, really, as she did in the first series. Yet, this fictional Anthi is slowly becoming a second Athena, which may beg the question if the title of this series should have been, Eléni and M Move to Athens to Be With Anthi.

The problem with Greece is that she is just too beautiful. Anon

If Anthi is my personal black hole, what am I, I wonder. Am I a man looking for an Anthi in another universe where she is free both inside and outside? Am I a lost soul looking for a cornerstone? Am I exploring the confines of reality within fiction and vice versa? I could be searching for the ultimate answer to the meaning of life, though I seem to know it since it is too obvious, and frankly uninteresting. Life is now, as my heart beats for life but also for love, and it wants to be with Anthi beyond anyone else, though I could never hurt Eléni, and thus I am also trapped inside. But Eléni would not be hurt, as far as I know, if she is included. I, however, cannot share my love between two women. I do not know how Anthi would feel about it had she been completely free, but she is not and thus the question does not apply to her, or to me, since we cannot be together. The ramblings of a mind in love with another mind and body can rarely be resolved. I need Anthi for so many reasons, yet only one seems to matter. Does Anthi need me?

The evening was eavesdropping on the late afternoon as we continued our tour around the waters of Crete. We met many birds, some of them dropping by to say hello to Athena and leave with some blessed bread. Other boats crossed our path, cheering when Athena Forever was reflected upon their minds like the reverberation of a Greek song. Love was in the air, and a small part of it was Anthi’s and mine, short in length as we tended to stand close to each other, but deeper than the sea we were sailing upon. I breathed in the air she breathed out, capturing the molecules of love she was sending me every few seconds like a metronome. We were bathing in the air around us and soaring in our minds. This yacht had a lot of heart within and without. Each time I looked elsewhere, I saw Anthi. She was everywhere, even within Eléni’s eyes. O Anthi! my mind mumbled back and forth, feverish, with Anthi being the only antidote.

Having reached about half of the way around Crete, Captain Chloros announced that we could anchor for the night and continue on the morrow with the first breeze of dawn, or continue all through the night and miss the blueness both above and below. We all asked him to stop for the night as we gazed at the Moon and the stars, watching our Athena surveying the sky for signs that only a true goddess could decipher both with her accrued knowledge and birthright wisdom. We decided to sleep à la belle étoile (under the stars) for at least the first part of the night. Athena had Patrick for her comfort, and Eléni and Anthi had M, I mean me, given in part to the fact that Glaukopis was too small for any comfort for Anthi, but mostly because we felt love for each other, both inside and outside, though the outside part was mostly Eléni-sided, although one of my hands caressed Anthi whenever I could, to feel the warmth of her skin and perhaps taste the promise of her being with my fingers. Touching her thus was like learning to pass very little for a lot, for everything in light of our obligations.

For Anthi Kanéna I would traverse

Oceans and seas streaming to her beauty

Reverberating within my perverse

Antithetic mind whose disguised duty

Negates everything she aspires to show

Tantalizingly only to her buss

Having kissed me in her mind to a glow

Indicating love is stronger than us

Killing me softly with her silent word

Answering my mindful kisses with yes

Never deigning her M unfit or blurred

Ensconcing my unsettled artful guess

Now is the time of our fascination

Affording us respite from our station

I am losing control of this story. I wonder if I may require another narrator to tell it from now on. But how could s/he tell this story with a different mind and no heart? O Anthi, my love! Only you could tell it as it should be told. It is either you, me, or Goddess Athena, though it is not for her to tell of her own divine beauty as her wisdom would demand. It is you or me, dear Anthi, who can tell this story, I whispered in her sleepy mind.

“I know, my love,” Anthi whispered back in mine. “You have to tell it, not I. It is your story. It is your being on the line. It is you, M, who must tell our story to our lips and our eyes. It is you who must show me what we are waiting for. It is you, my love, who brought back Athena as well as bringing me into your mind and your wooden heart. It is you, mon poumon droit (my right lung), who breathes me as if I had become your new air, a new oxygenated molecule, AKO. Je t’aime et c’est toi qui dois poursuivre notre chemin (I love you and it is you who must continue our path),” Anthi added to my mind.

I wanted to scream her name to the night and everything within it, but her touch kept me quiet, crying “Anthi” in my heart instead. She heard it, gently squeezing my right leg, perhaps asking for a pound of my flesh, which I would have gladly given, so she could see my love for her inside, in every cell, bloody or not. Yes, I was even ready to give her my blood, though I never considered it of any importance, except for bringing oxygen and nutrients to the entire living system. It is part of any living machine, even a tree, though it is not always red. Anthi’s blood was surely blue, like mine, except for my heart’s. It may be one of the reasons for our almost immediate attraction to one another.

I will never forget how she looked under the olive tree back in Athens, making call after call to Crete to get the yacht ready in time for our Athena. She looked magnificent from every angle, almost stopping my heart each time that she laughed. I remember holding her hand and admiring her short fingernails after they tapped on the small table like the heartbeats of my heart. She already knew that I loved her. I saw it in her eyes. She smiled but brushed it away like a lost thought or a forbidden one. O Anthi, I already knew, that my life would become un ménage à trois (a threesome) involving three women, one of them a goddess, without any moving parts except for our minds and hearts, and our hands when love required at least some touching to be able to breathe.

We all fell asleep under the Moon and the stars, with a goddess watching over us and feeling content, as far as I could surmise. I looked at her from time to time, thanking her in her mind for all the things already done and all the things still to come. No one snored and no one talked in their sleep. Everyone of us, even Captain Chloros, slept as if we were immortal.

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A warm thank you, as warm as Greece, to Anthi Psomiadou for her continued interest in this fictional account of several love stories all taking place for long moments in Athens and Crete. The rest of Greece is beckoning as well to be included in this exploration of several forms of love and fate.

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