All I wanted was to see her again, and again, in any place, and in any capacity, because she stripped me of my sad days, and made me consider the quiet kindness of happiness. Her hand plunged into her pocket, lips, lost in a kiss, breathless, breaking down and born again, without a sin, or…

These days, I am owed to too many people. Second after second, they shred their share from my skin, chattering as they chew. It’s never about how good I taste, and always about how hungry they are.

It was apparently okay to cry, all over the spilled milk of soiled dreams. Maybe it would have helped, reaching into the depths of a fractured soul and pulling one last teary eyed performance from her. It would have been so healing, cataclysmically selfish, but a collective collapse that she had earned. Holding on was…

The first winds of winter were waiting, giggling in the sky with grey clouds as the sun sobbed at the way she had been betrayed. There was no promise of a happy ending, just the inevitable upheaval of the season, and the sun had no choice but to see it through. This was her penance.