A turbid small puddle of whatever mirrors the dim lights of centuries ago
Time is more distant than the miles we count.
Leave be the mud of place and cleanse yourself with the ideas of where your mind has taken you. Reality is memory and reflects only the things you should have done.
I’m left here to contemplate the deathlessness of this place because centuries from now, I’ll read about it.
I hear you dance about me upon the grimy cobblestones. Who do you hold in your arms and how does she keep the hem of her dress pristine? Do you keep her five inches from the ground?
I scribble away upon this wooden box, a quill and an endless supply of ink. I am well supplied because of an idea 10 virgins gave me. The concept of keeping plenty while waiting… for what I’m not sure. I begged for the writing box on a birthday so many years ago, and I’ve followed you about sketching out your life of beauty and gentle love, which is, of course, nothing like you. The deception is nearly complete except for little old me, my pen and my ink.
How is it you haunt me? How is it I cannot push you away despite the many distractions I beg for each day? I want nothing; nothing from you and yet if I could, I would ask you to stay to talk an evening away. The fly to the flame and all that I’m afraid.
Dance for me.
Take her slender body in your arms and gently lead to music that I can only imagine, in a room of marble and admiration. In the end, my envy and depravity will exhaust my efforts and I will sell my foolscap upon the corners. Those moments of bartering will be the true me, pushing away deception, revealing the sinew and ligaments taunt and agonizing just beneath the skin.
A word picture of you in the lush white of winter immortalizing, in physical beauty, the lies of the age. The dragon is innocent and all the young girls know it; they offer themselves willingly to dark corner meetings and mysterious dark eyed strangers. I’ll write their misery to comfort the plain girl in winter.