Bits of conversation fill my head   Tangling with words we haven’t said   Glimpses of a movement you once made   Knowing I could live but dream instead   Wondering if you saw the part I played   Whether I’m the reason that you stayed   Only half believing it could be   Well aware I want what I forbade   Questioning my own reality   Doubting in my mind the things I see   Altering perception fast as light   Do you know for years you’ve haunted me?   Speaking words you never could recite   Giving bliss as if to test my flight   All is but illusion, this I know   Yet more felt than objects in my sight   The world may see my skin but just below   Simmers what I think but never show   Lifetimes lived with you but more than this,   Guessing where in your sweet dreams you go   Do you drown in memory’s abyss?   Is there music in a voice you miss?   When you close your eyes do you relive   Each averted glance, aborted kiss?   Do you harbor what you should forgive?   Search for signs in every narrative?   Or repel all company save one,   Who is not cure but palliative?   While it’s possible these things you’ve done,   All too likely I’m the only one   And upon this thought my vision fled   So I end back where I had begun   Nothing but the present fills your head   Forgetting more than half the things I’ve said   Shadows of a sacrifice you made   Knowing you could dream but live instead.