I never knew you,
but I see you clearly,
very clearly,
as you weep, as you cast
a watchful, timid glance
across crowded rooms or
empty spaces.

I never spoke to you,
but many are the times
that I have heard you
whisper frail words of comfort
to yourself,
perhaps alone at night,
beneath your thin, yet protective
sheets, or perhaps
in the daytime,
when crucial moments
lurk or strike
and when chance once again
turns its opening and welcoming
hand into a clenched and
malign fist
and with cold and staring eyes,
punches and punches and
hurts.

I never saw you,
yet in my dreams you stared
at both that which was near and that which was far,
far away
with those same despairing eyes,
those eyes that had foretold
a thousand deaths that were
not to be,
eyes that had nevertheless, been
scratched
by those thousand foresights
almost imperceptibly
....almost.

We never kissed,
yet often have I tasted
the salt of your tears
as they raced,
frightened,
from your eyes,
fleeing from harsh and blackened scenes.

For the tears, at least,
there is escape from that which
burdens and that which
deadens.
For you and I, however,
there is no escape
from the bleak,
the painful
and the menacing.