I measured time in heartbeats by seeking my life

while stumbling through the lives of others;

The ones I preyed would test, would dare

that my memories of you were imagined, and through.

For more than fifty long years my desperate theft

was their lives whose ties I craved would be true,

but they never knew–how could they, those few?

It was always ever you.

They became almost real, across decades, those someones

who I begged into my nights to rip my psalms of you away,

to pitch those prayers into cold grey winds of change

That would soar to the skies then fall,

and roar in pain, slashed by shards of rain,

Realized not as cries, but sighs; they survive, are alive–

my memories of you, not imagined, are true.

It was always ever you.