Well, let me tell you about the way she looked

The way she acts and the color of her hair
Her voice was soft and cool, her eyes were clear and bright
But she's not there

Her one visible flaw was a ragged jig zagged scar whiter than the milky cream of the inside of her pale wrist lightning striking its way across a faint blue ribboned vein. That place that visibly pulses and where you can press the pad of a finger and feel life coursing, the place where she planned its escape, its oozing release. Her eyes were fragile green and rarely wide, her feet tiny and usually bare. To her family she was Sis, to strangers she was Delores, but to me she was Sylvia, always Silvia. There were no others, family, strangers, me, the others were locked out, dismissed and no one had a key. If I could paint I would render her hair the red of a turning maple and her skin pearly and papery thin and river rock smooth and those eyes sea green, shore green, not the green of depth, that would come later when she could only see inside herself. It was impossible to capture her on film, it never worked, I tried, it never was right, I tossed them all but the one with her bare feet drawn under her dress green matched perfectly to those eyes, downcast, sunlit shined red hair, wispy tendrils face framing. Touching her never felt quite right, like the powdery feel of a butterfly wing you know you should have left alone because it's ethereal and ephemeral and you've robbed a surface of something you can't put back. But I held her because I knew she wouldn't last, I would have held her always if it would have made a difference but I knew it wouldn't, she would have left me for trying so I held fleeting and forsook forever. When she couldn't sleep or eat or care I would carry her with me so as not to have to leave her wherever she was, a place I couldn't go, but I didn't want to leave her any more alone than she already was. I could only carry her so far, so long, so finally had to leave her leave herself to the alone she always knew she had to have. Because she was Silvia to me, only to me and had chosen the Silvia path I lifted the words I had seen her mouth in whispered hush and put them next to the photo that didn't capture her either.

Mad Girl's Love Song

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)