Up high in the Alps where the winter winds blow,
The grand Bella Vista sat wrapped in the snow.
A kingdom of patients with pale, fading breath,
Who counted the days in the shadow of death.
There Clerfayt arrived in his roaring race car,
A flash of the world from the lowlands afar.

He came for a friend, but he stayed for a prize:
Lillian Dunkirk, with sparks in her eyes.
Her lungs were consumed by the mountain’s white frost,
But she loathed the safe prison where youth was being lost.
“I want to live now, not in years of delay!
Take me down to the valley before I decay.”

He laughed at her boldness, a daredevil soul,
Who raced against clocks with no safety or goal.
He took her away from the doctors and sheets,
To the glitter of Paris and sun-flooded streets.
Two drifters who lived on the edge of the knife,
Embracing the fever of transient life.

[…]

They spent all her money on dresses and wine,
And fancied their freedom was something divine.
For Clerfayt found purpose inside her wild grace,
A reason to halt his continuous race.
He wanted a home, and a ring for her hand,
A quiet future that they could command.

But Lillian shuddered to hear of a lease,
For a long-term devotion would shatter her peace.
She knew that her clock was fast running to zero,
And she would not burden her daredevil hero.
“Heaven has favorites,” she thought with a sigh,
“And those who are chosen are destined to die.”

So when he drove off for the Monza grand prize,
She packed up her suitcases, severing ties.
She planned to return to the peaks and the chill,
To leave him behind while he loved her still.
But fate plays a game that no mortal can scheme,
And tears through the fabric of every man’s dream.

[…]

On the asphalt of Monza, the engines roared loud,
A blur of metal before the wild crowd.
A sudden collision, a terrible crash—
And Clerfayt’s swift racer was broken to ash.
The man who faced death for the thrill of the sport
Was crushed on the track as his lifespan cut short.

She sat by his bedside and watched his life flee,
The survivor of storms dying sooner than she.
The racer was gone, and the theater was cleared,
And all of the safety she hated and feared
Was mocked by the silence that hung in the room:
The healthy man first to inherit the gloom.

She returned to the Alps as the autumn leaves fell,
To the grand Bella Vista, her familiar old cell.
Six weeks did she linger in sorrow and grace,
With a peaceful expression upon her pale face.
Then she choked on her blood as the morning grew bright,
And closed her tired eyes in the ultimate night.