Just As You Were (Poetry)

I know it surely — just as though it were a prophecy —
some long-ago prediction come to pass —
I won’t see you again, my darling girl —
that last time — years ago — it was the last.

Time hadn’t touched you then — not one cruel mark
to blemish skin or hair or dim your eye —
for me you’ll always stop at just turned seventeen
in memory you never can be more.

And I have photographs in case I need reminders now and then —
some confirmation that your beauty was that fine
for as the years go on I sometimes think you might have been a dream
that I had once — then vanished clean away.

There are nights I ache from missing you — others I feel you close —
like maybe you are thinking of me — each a ghost to the other
the rest of our haunted lives. There is a pain in separation but
                                consolation, too —
I’m glad I’ll never see you start to age and you will never have to
                                watch me die.