Flakes fall, a lead glitter
in terminal weep
among mouse skulls, asleep
in a fantasy heaven.

Deep eyes hold their coal
in her resting snow,
a taffeta landscape of dead love,
caged by spiders’ palaces
woven from a heart-wool cloud of not-to-be,
frozen among yellow’d confetti.

And as a century rolls,
time is frozen, like bronze bells’ breath in air,
capturing in glass a sense of hope from a dream past;
each unbite of cake an unkiss,
undreamed,
awaiting a pane to shock and crack,
and a spring sunshine
to melt her.