The scratchy, faraway voice of the phonograph
unearths emotions buried deep within my heart,
provides a key that opens, ever so slightly,
a musty trunk of gauzy memories, flooding my soul
with antique sunbeams of melancholy gold.

Where have you gone, the balance of my being?

Lost in time, and timeless, I remain alone,
pining for a time and place I can't recall.

The music draws me inward, pulls me deep
into a swirling pool of broken thoughts,
fragments of colored glass in moody disarray,
shards of light and shadow shatterings,
entwined in rose-kissed lace and honeysuckle ribbon.

I remember you, or the essence of you,
and the remembrance is a dark, smoldering ache
that overwhelms me, surrounds me, refuses to release me,
and reminds me; I can never forget you.

Everywhere, in the wafting silk of dusty fragrances;
in the crystalline facade of lonely melodies; in the
faded, misty photographs of unknown, unsmiling faces;
in the fractured mirror pieces of a thousand haunting dreams;
in the disembodied ghosts born of countless fiery yearnings;
I find only you, and the place where I belong.

The faraway voice calls to me, seeks me, draws me
back, into a wispy ring of smoky apparitions,
a spirit world, real only in my dreams.

The distant, fragile music is my only link to you,
to that world, to the place and time I long for.

Oh, to lose myself within those haunting chords
and somehow find a shadow passage home! I would go,
without a second thought.

But I know I can never go back.

The voice is dead; the time is spent; the record, broken.