In Greece the philosophers are debating, Socrates is drinking hemlock, and she’s posing for a sculpture of Erato, muse of light poetry and lovers, and she’s nineteen.

In Crete she’s oiling her breasts, and she’s jumping bulls in the ring while King Minos applauds, and someone’s painting her likeness on a wine jar, and she’s nineteen.

In 2065 she’s stretched out on the revolving floor of a holographic photographer, who records her as an erotic dream in Living Sensolove, imprisons the sight and sound and the very smell of her in a tiny diamond matrix. She’s only nineteen.

And a caveman outlines Charlotte with a burnt stick on the wall of the temple cave, filling in the shape and the texture of her with earths and berry dyes. Nineteen.

Charlotte is there, in all places, all times, sliding through our fantasies, a girl forever.

I want her so much it makes me hurt sometimes. That’s when I take down the photographs of her and just look at them for a while, wondering why I didn’t try to touch her, why I wouldn’t really even speak to her when she was there, and never coming up with an answer that I could understand.

That’s why I’ve written this all down, I suppose.

This morning I noticed yet another gray hair at my temple. Charlotte is nineteen. Somewhere.