I still search for you behind the veil
of time; I cannot look away.
I wonder what you saw that night,
what you felt in that unexpected,
unwanted moment you couldn’t escape.
I know I am struggling to reach into
a world I do not yet wish to enter,
but all I recall are your eyes, not
as they were that night but as captured
years earlier by an ever uncaring lens.
That is my only sight of you, save
as I have recreated you over the years
in dreams of what might have been,
what could never be, what never was.
What did you see when, the next day,
they offered you a parting glance,
or did you decline and turn them away,
retreating into the shadows again, knowing
the pain a lingering look might bring.
The gulf between us was always unbridgeable
until by twist of fate, twist of science, you
emerged from the deep mists of my desire,
tore through the impermeable membrane
of hope and, lying on a hillside outside
Charleston, West Virginia, finally gave me
the true family that time had denied me.
And now each day the mirror brings you
ever closer to me and the filial bonds
I never imagined have grown unbreakable.

First Published in Literary Odyssey Magazine, Issue 2, March 2024
https://online.fliphtml5.com/qyrob/xcwh/#p=1