I had sworn myself a passing stranger...

The day your eyes caught mine.

Shoulder to shoulder in the crowded fray...

No sense of danger…

Another place & time.

 

How I marveled then & was ashamed to tell...

Not having taken note of you before...

Yet you foreknew me all too well...

So, I loved you all the more.

 

In a glance, you looked right through me

Dislodging & wrenching my heart free...

Your eyes, how they did glisten...

My soul, how it did listen...

Mine eyes, how they did see.

 

“Joli, my sweet Joli”...

Were the simple words you spoke.

Ever so winsome & disarming...

How impetuously they did evoke.

 

That day I stood before you in the lunchline...

As I dropped my cup for all to see.

The table at which I sat alone...

Where you slid in next to me.

 

The exchange outside the four walls...

Where I sat cold & alone, waiting for you.

Alongside me you came to call...

I could not help but stall...

As if to say “This much is true.”

 

That day you fixed your eyes upon me...

Ever so wistfully & from afar.

As though I was all that you could see...

And the night sky had but one star.

 

The time you tugged upon my toes...

As you breezed right by me in the throes...

Of love that went straight to my head...

Where even Archangels fear to tread.

 

Again, you drew near to me one day...

And, for but a moment, drew nearer still...

Tightly shutting my eyes where I did lay...

I dared not relax them at my will.

 

But even in that instance...

Two did NOT become as one.

You just offered an assist to...

A job still left undone.

 

Then ever so ephemerally...

It came time for you to go.

Leaving me to contemplate the loss...

Of the you I had come to know.

 

Disconsolate & with resign...

I watched your backside grow smaller...

Against the early morning light.

The ensign of your shadow looming taller...

As you faded out of sight...

 

My blush giving way to pallor...

My soul so wishing to take flight.

As quicker by the hour...

The ensuing days gave way to night.

 

How I wished right then somehow...

I had not been spoken for.

How I wished I had freely pursued...

The already shaken promise & love-laden lore...

The unrealized dream of YOU.