Same Eyes, Same Teeth - The Similarities End There

I'm in love with a girl that I see only in memories - a wild little rebel child who visits me in dreams of dreams. She was often barefoot, frequently late, forever falling in love with someone new. Her voice was melodic and husky with emotion - she used it to serenade the city in the summer days, nearly empty parking lots in the summer nights. She was flighty, yes, but not completely insane. She rode a tamer roller coaster than I; she had some semblance of control, the reigns of her life held slack in tiny hands. She read voraciously, wrote of transcendence, communicated with the sky. She seduced. She conquered. She was victorious. She was ALIVE.

I tremble in the dark now, where she would have been brave. I have given way to the swallowing of loss, where she would have felt the solid rock of possibility beneath her feet. I have screamed into the void where she would have embraced it. I try to sing like she did, but my vocal cords have been ravaged by illness. I want to read like she did, but my books sit dusty and unattended to. I want to write like she did, but the pen shakes heavy in my hand, unnatural and awkward. I want to feel as beautiful as she was, but I look in the mirror and see a very fortunate corpse who barely escaped death's clutches.

I still see her, sometimes, in flashes in my eyes. That same green on a background of earth. But when I smile, the similarities fade away. Her cigarette teeth looked much like mine, but so real and light was the curve of her lips that I can't stand to look at my own - a facade.