she's still there, waiting as she said she would with a flower in her hair and a head full of could, relief steadying your heart, racing more from the spectre of a premonition than the unaccustomed exercise, a lover's perdition reflected in your eyes as you threw yourself desperately down the towpath and through the people beating their steady retreat on wheels in the street, fear hounding your heels and tearing your breath that all will be gone, she up and left just because people do, just because when you are winning, when it's finally you, that's where you fall, who knows where this fear had its beginning, why this premonition sprang into being, sudden recognition of complacency perhaps, at the moment all those around you stopped, turned about and went back the way they came and you the odd one out, and her waiting in the rain, you, late! and so you ran to offer your humility for the universe is falling inwards and the true futility of it all is only now become clear. now there is only she and i, the water dripping through our lives, maybe she's waited and love is still here binding the holes and blinding the lies, i think i beat fate, i think i'm on time, but the truth is pulsating in the dark of her eye
