I kept wide awake
to witness your resurrection.

How your golden hair
would, like rays of the sun,
burst, wings of a phoenix,
forth out of rotting green moss.

But I either fell asleep,
or you rose back to the earth with
half your life already passed.

The gold was tainted with stale copper,
and damp clumps of dark green clung
to the once-majesty of your dress.

You had the sunken eyes of an insomniac,
with the beginning of frost-bits clinging
like blisters to your skin.

I breathed your dank breath, tear-tainted,
safe, nonetheless, under your familiar
ashen sky, where your golden soul throbbed

like a sparrow shivering
under a glistening glaze of snow.