for Dolly and Meds

I was there once, in the winter of my youth.
You were paper planes on the water,
hooded eyelids like opaque windows
forever young in the stairwell of the café,
I was in the scent of your laundry
spinning in your mind as it spun in the drier
And then we had breakfast.
And the snow fell all around us.
The snake still drapes its body lazily
as if we had been easy prey.
We never did ask why we were chosen
only that in the winter of our youth,
we felt compelled to drink from the fountain,
with all its eloquent promises like dew drops.
We were surrounded by metaphors,
in the garden with the crows screaming out
black wings flapping against the wind
And then we grew older, ravaged by time
as a surf that hits the beaches, a slapping hand
First came spring, then inevitable autumn.
There was once an us, and once a you,
And now the echoes only remain.
There was only the hint of our affair,
never the tumultuous conclusion of one.
And perhaps we should leave it at that.