She walks my dream streets,
Honey-haired, onyx-eyed,
Ever-twenty-three,
A past unavoided,
A future unlived.

Present but unknown,
She resides in ether,
Lost in faded time until,
Appearing,
She walks across my emotions
Clothed in knife-edged clarity,
In colors too sharp for my heart.

The decades contract,
Focusing memory.
And she stands before me,
A snapshot prior to
The choices of youth.

Night blooms and,
Sundered by her smile,
Devastated by the dreamspace
That separates Reality from Desire,
I weep.