I Left Her There

She's there somewhere.
She used to be here,
But I left her there.

The one who loved to sing
As much as she loved the smell
Of a new box of crayons
(That first-day-of-school smell).

The one who drew stories
Others might have written.

The girl who let her Muse
Take her on winged journeys,
Farther than her imagination could see,
Higher than her thoughts could breathe.

The child who held up
Fists full of sunlit beach sand,
And let the fine, tan powder
Sift through her fingers
And sprinkle her face with stars
That sparkled the rest of the day.

I left her there,
An unfinished sentence, past tense,
Testing the sparkling clear waters with her toes,
Unaware of the icy tides
That crashed on the shore
And stopped the heart.

© Judith C Evans 2014