Glassy droplets spill
onto the tasseled expanse
beneath her feet,
the quiet, willowed trees
whispering to her through rustling autumn leaves.

Her itinerary lies blank,
gray pages turning quietly to dust,
and, as she endures her searing lungs,
her feet continue to pound over the landscape,
each stride taking her farther
from the past she longs to relinquish.

a Vagrant, they called her, whispering that
her pedigree was unsuitable, her manners unrefined,
and only He, with hair like silken gold,
used to hold her shivering form against his,
and she had entrusted herself in him,
with a fiery passion previously unknown,
until he departed for another world,
unstitching the patches
he mended in her battered heart.

And as darkness seeps
through the field on which she lies,
she peers through doe-like eyelashes,
vision studded with glassy beads, and watches
Heaven’s teardrops washing away the remnants
of her footprints from this earth.