touches undone -- I skate delicately
                  over the frost, escaping time alone
                    under ever summer skies --
                      azure yearnings to a place that never was --
                        Lorien only in my soul

                 sinking in a queasy solitude,
                    beseeching pain in quest for feeling
                        anything ... mocking rapture as frivolity --
                  so conscious of lacing up the smiles,
                      just to enter stage right.

                the soft, imagined breast of a friend
                   pressed against my too-real cheek --
                      a helpless helping
                          a star or more away ...