She fell in love with a picture
from a thousand years ago
of green eyes smiling (but it was a smirk)
she didn’t know it was yesterday
a day that never was, a time she’d never know.

The man behind a painting well reversed
lay sleeping under cover, red eyes shut
that would be bright, long hair greasy
under guises of the night, voices raspy
gasping out history, her story in his sight.

She was young but much too old.
He shivered in the heat, sweating
in the cold of winter days, gathered
women, lied of youth and lithe visage
and they were dazzled, drugged by shot matte.

She was growing younger every day
and he resembled photos fading
in the way old photos do, sepia
browns and grays, she found one
hidden up his sleeve, he died that way.

She was born again, he never was,
into a land where souls were golden coin
and clear as glass, she saw everything,
revealed at last as what was true and
what had never been, she loved a photo,
left a photo hanging in a room, no windows there.