She had never known love—

not in the way the poets told it.

Love was a wide, distant land,

set beyond a vast and winding river.

And everything she tried

was never enough to cross.

He was a little wooden bridge

suspended between shores.

His words—

a quiet symphony,

gentle as silence.

He was unlike any man

she had earned through persistence.

Oh, she knew he didn’t exist.

Not really.

But still—

she couldn’t help herself.

She couldn’t resist.

There just was something

About the face she couldn’t place

The crooked smile that made her soul sing

The thoughts of longing

without bodies ever touching

The way she imagined him

in private,

giving herself to him—

completely,

Yet without surrender.

He was everywhere,

and nowhere.

Like clouds of smoke:

visible,

but untouchable.

She had not known love.

She had built a river

between herself and it.

He was the bridge.

And when she stepped on it,

it splintered—

collapsed inward—

and together they drowned

in the river of nonexistence.