There was a year in your life
when your music abandoned
     you and you

     found no meaning in your ink-
     stained history, her scent ghosting

over the creased sheets
of memory.  But when you ceased
     to choke out the vowels

     of her name you were no longer weighed
     down by the heavier things. Did you

know it then?  How you could believe
in something and still fail
     to live up to it?

    How there could be no meaning in flight
    without clouds to gauge your distance?