'a Stubborn Memory

I havn't seen my childhood crush for sixty years, and memory is faithless, for I loved her at the age of eight, and lost her at sixteen; those two events are silent sentinals presiding over yin and yang of one sweet paradise of hope a lesser Milton could have seized, forsaking angels for Joanne. But then she never would have owned my consciousness, and though she sent it spinning through the cosmos on that final summer night, she lacked the strength to wipe away the gift of her eight years before, confessing in our homeroom that she knew I had been watching. And does she know, I watch her still, soft curls a sacrament for me that dusty years may not defile? Yet I still smile; the cosmos, too, is in another place, and time and space defy all rules of memory and sweet regret. ~