yesterday the long white hair of the snow
had grown over the collar of dawn.  when i
walked out, i left a line of tracks
that were slightly pigeon-toed.
my silk nightgown, too long for me,
trailed on the ground
in the wet snow.
my hair was in long braids.
perhaps i looked like a small clown,

or a poor little match girl, or a warrior
returning from a strange dream.
perhaps i have finished carving deep
wrinkles like valleys into my
aging trust.  maybe i have lingered too long
in the burnt embers of a summer fire
on the mountain of my heart.
perhaps i look unladylike
and immature, like an uncouth orphan.
when and where was i ever prepared
for this life?  perhaps it is better after all
that you never came here to dwell

in this museum of sad delights
and intimate fantasies. perhaps
you would have made my transparent life
opaque with your secret,
inscrutable desires.  perhaps
you require a fairy tale maiden,
clear-eyed and coy with hair
as pure as silk and skin like jade,
shaping her beautiful obeisance
with small hands
that are sometimes clever and refined,
and sometimes firm and fitted to a gun,
according to your whim and will.

perhaps your seemingly authentic love
was like the wind-blown
waves across a ferry's bow, an inconstant
surface of reflection, shaped by need
and self-delusion.  perhaps
outward appearance is no indication
of virtue within. perhaps my tales
of trying days were a way of pleading
for you to never do what you have done...

i , too, have crossed that river of dreams
searching for the unknown antidote
to my life.

when i woke one day to find you beside me
it was reason enough
for me to have endured all that came before you.

now you are gone