A Coward's Lament

A Coward's Lament

I think that I shall go away. No, run away,
and think till I can think no more about you.

I shall be honest with myself
and read the writing on the wall.

I dreamed you as I walked the corridors of adolescence.
I caressed your hair and wrote a thousand lines.
I made love to you long before I made love at all.

You were the friend I would have loved, the lover
I would have liked, but you were young and far away.

You have had so many names. You were my Dulcinea
and my Juliet. And now you come into my life,
too late, too soon, and test the crystal prison
which I built when life was not my friend.

You are the summer breeze which swirls the hallways
of my soul and melts the faces that I labored long
to mask my nakedness.
Your name is Theseus and Juliet.

Yes, I shall run away
and dream again.