Palms and cold cheeks

pressed against the condensation

of winter windows-

"If only I didn’t love him so," she said.

"Too young a woman to be his baby girl."

But no-no, no, no-

she knew they were all wrong about things

like sixteen years a lover’s albatross when really

it counted for nothing in the age of the souls-

the length of love and the capacity of hearts-

as if she didn’t wake every day with a heart full to bursting

with a love for him that she knew would never end-

as if her feelings were jacks and marbles

waiting to be tossed and caught,

rolled and traded,

on sidewalks trodden upon by lesser lights-

no one could tell or know of her torture defined

in the impossibility of separating this one as two

(soft petals from hard stems)

and yet they handed her red paper hearts

with white lacy edges with names

she never wished to hear

printed on them in block letters

but too young to know

but no one could deny

she loved so completely

till the day they both died