Making You Whole

I draw you on scraps of memory in portions and pieces. I can't make you whole now, can't see all of you. The tropical beach has almost washed itself away. Wind-wept hair flowing over one eye; how do you draw laughter? I mind-paint only one wave retrace long brown legs. Contours swim into invisibility, too much to grasp hold of - your warm salty breath, dark lips; morsels smother my thoughts in a haze of remorseless time. Yet there you are in fragments running ankle deep in an ever moving sky. I must pause, glance deeper, pull out another blank page from my personal history book. The more I try to put you together the less I capture, the jigsaw is scattered segments forever lost. It seems to me now that the dead do not fade, it is the living who move into the clouds looking for what we once were.