The Cave of Bone in the Riverbed

Dreaming of that face again.
The one I can put in my pocket.
The one I can carry in my heart.
Dreaming of that girl, no bigger than a leaf.
That tiny girl, who sleeps in a riverbed.
The one who has a waterbug as her best friend.
Her faded blonde hair, woven with dead twigs.
Her once vestal dress, water stained with pond scum,
and torn by bumblebees.
But those eyes could never be stained.
Those eyes, a roaring sky blue.
Every other day she goes searching,
and sometimes she finds the soul of another.
With the rain writing poetry in her cloudy eyes,
she pours herself into her fairytale life.
She cries aloud to the sun dripping in her sky,
"I feel like Peter Pan chasing his shadow,
but that stupid boy didn't know the difference
between the front and back of his hand."
She's tired,
weary,
sick of the same old shit.
So she hitches a ride home with a cricket.
She says "the ride was a bitch" to the waterbug
who blithely ignores her but leaves enough
hot water in the teapot.
Hugging the water instead of her as he
swims away.
She'd never admit that she didn't have a soul.
She'd never admit that she didn't have a home.
Admit that her heart won't stop bleeding from
the terrible space between her and the world.
And she'll never say that a leaf was bigger than her.
Funny, how she'd always bite me when I
tried to put her in my pocket,
when I tried to show her love.
Eventually she stopped coming to me,
stopped calling to me in her dreams,
But I still dream of that face...