Missing Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

I see you still,
dressed indigo,
your colour,
scarf wrapped
casually,
and tucked
into that place,
where twins,
not quite identical
reside, in expectation
and denial,
all the same.
There was
a pallor in your face,
an ambush
from within,
dark circles came
and went,
reflecting lashes
like lazy plankton
above the tinge of
rouge, a pattern of
a butterfly, so still,
a leaf of frost,
hoping to become
an icicle of fate.
I loved your hands,
gestures of youth
and laughter, joy,
dismissing doom
while painting the horizon
a hopeful green,
though something knew,
inside your dimpled mind
that vultures lay in wait,
for all of us,
but prematurely so
for you.