They lie there, not quite entwined
in something not quite real. Blue
eyes seem to scan, like lines,
the face accross the pillow.

"Penny for 'em?"

She does not flinch,
but fires back the usual words
with keen-edged grace, 
cutting enough to make her wish
she'd made him wait.

Squirming now, she fidgets,
and he for all the while is still,
following each evasive movement
from above her labyrinth
of paths already trodden.

Her words a shadow-puppetry
of what his life had been, seen,
behind his soft, round eyes
in black and white;

she would have to colour in his dreams.