I knew her, just as well,
I’d known her countless times before:
brushing past me in the crowd -
just ahead of me in line at the store -
blushing at the Circle K, picking change off of the floor;
I’d known her once in high school, just briefly in the hall
she was them, she was they -
she was no one at all

She was everyone to someone who wasn’t me;
just a muse, just a picture - visual debris

She was starlight through an hourglass at the foot of my bed,
painting rose gardens with verbs on the inside of my head -
coffee shops, cough drops, highway cops and roadside stops
a literary stream of consciousness and
a cherry on top

She was just a face within a frame:
just a muse - just a picture and a name;
never met her, never knew her,
always loved her, just the same.