I meet Ophelia in the courtyard before dawn.
The garland of wildflowers strung round her neck,
embers of mourning, taut and un-plucked.
Daisy, hibiscus and rue.
The horizon is a febrile dream,
and her silhouette: seeing, unseen.
Her fingers on my arm gentle as a willow’s trellis
caught in a waning wind.
Standing in the ruined courtyard
amidst the Corinthian columns,
built on the dead and ancient tongues,
she says in barely a whisper,
You have to understand, Justin,
I have a whole life and I cannot give that to you.
Falling into the clear stream of her voice,
quiet as the faint, ascendant light.
You must understand this. How could either
of us give up our life for the other?
And soft laughter in her eyes like larkspur,
white and beautiful blue.
She kisses me with the nothingness grace of air,
leaving me the beguiling shape-shift of love.
She walks away into the lissome morning.

Form reveals itself slowly: the sun climbs;
she has disappeared into a field of daffodil.