afraid

i saw her in my dreams,
crying.  metaphor for an implicit
tragedy haunting horizons
between the possible and
the inevitable; echoed footfalls
fill the edges, hauling
memories from an abyss
like coal-diggers in dark hills,
the weight of the earth
pressing on their eyeballs
and making it difficult to breathe.
tentatively i step
off the circumference
of my own breathlessness,
look out from under my
lashes and wonder if
the meaning is yours or
if the tears will all be
my own.