but as every nascent narrator knows
the story rarely goes as planned;
the best premeditated verses fail
to find the rhyme and fitting time,
and fall to ignominy.

he passes, singing –
she watches, weaving
her own threaded demise.

the heady fumes of flowers spin
a cocoon around her senses, and
curses are so easily forgotten:

there, the sun upon his hair
there, the road beneath his feet
there, the high walls on which she waits
the other she, the other they –

her mind falls in eclipse.