The idea of milk or snow
if it could be warm and brought inside
to rest on the hinges of children's books.
His face,clean like pantomime,
painted extraordinary, but delicate:
white, shadow, and red
lips, but eyes, those eyes,
different as they approached,
worn slightly, and too beautiful.
It's painful, this resting image--too beautiful--
only seen in myself by other eyes, I imagine.
Glorious rest, a sleeping memory and reflection,
folded lines, soft, thick, and cool,
like touching the thought of milk or snow if it could be warm.
Beauty recognized in youth, I couldn't have drawn it better
though it has drawn me. Left me to look upon what stirs admiration,
what conquers hearts in sleeping states, as only I have done.
There is no doing in this, more painful still;
it exists like the hinges of a children's book
written on me, me, and you, you too. Staring
into the face of my sleeping story, stolen and owned,
I closed my eyes. How do you follow what is followed,
acquire what is had? How to parry, how to catch that
which I myself with escape with.
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