A Memoir of Lost Love

I'm feeling poorly since you're gone;
The days are grey, the nights drag on and on;
My sleep is fitful, dreams are passing strange--
I guess I don't adjust too well to change.

And when I rise, and walk the street,
I stumble, on some stranger's feet;
Some stranger, whom you do not love,
As if in dreamscapes then or now I moved.

And there is worse--far worse there is--
Than just that what was mine is his,
But what is his has gone away;
I'd see you his if I could only see you every day.

I dreamt of love in innocence;
Thought I, a toad, might turn a prince
From love, from once upon a time,
But I have loved, and now am left
In spots and warty shame and my own slime.

-- Stephen K. Roney