Decades on
she appears from nowhere
as defeated as she ever was
as old and marked and beautiful.
She smiles unmoved unmoving when I touch her cheek.
I sit rewriting the same song
I have written her for 50 years
as she comes to look
pressing her side to mine
across a dry border.
We wait, listening
to some ancient looping echo
of a page I hide to tell her
there have been better things.