Eyes half open, I see her through small slits.
She doesn't know I'm awake.
I keep myself conscious while feigning sleep,
just to look at her
- a waking dream.
She speaks,
but her sounds are muffled now,
archives penned in a faded ink
on unreliable paper,
a poor physical bank, my brain.
Her skin is dark,
but not olive,
lighter.
Her eyes are huge brown orbs almost dark enough,
but not quite,
to hide her pupils.
She looks back at me,
still unaware of my mental presence,
with no expression,
save the ones brought on by speech.
Her face is that of a tanned porcelain,
shining, reflecting light
here and there.
I think she's beautiful.
Friends (friends really?)
have told me of far prettier girls
in their eyes.
But their eyes are not mine.
Her face,
indeed her entire presence, being,
complements my mind.
Soothing. Relaxing.
All worries gone
from other compartments of my brain.
Every detail
is burned in my memory and,
had I the talent,
I could reproduce all her features on paper
or in stone.
Too, her voice is an ointment to the everyday burn
of my existence.

The solar system is dead without the earth,
a clump of rocks set in their motion
by an unknown entity,
ghastly boulders
plummeting forever toward
a single cause,
with
no
real
progress.
She makes life
meaningful,
or I too would be nothing
more than useless matter drifting through space,
tied by forces I could never hope to comprehend.
Without her,
I do not live.

I awake fully now and take her hand.
We walk, silently,
down white halls of engineered brick and metal.
Shadows imply darkness,
small places light cannot easily reach.
But there are no shadows here.

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