Her eyes were the brightest, two unknown moons in a red planet.

As I walked away from her I could listen to her crystalline voice, shattering like a glass menagerie. She never wanted to sing and I knew she could do it, but now, at the farewell hour, it was useless to talk her into taking those singing lessons I always promised to pay for her.

She didn’t ask or beg, her pearly tears falling to the ground. If winged horses weren’t born where they fell it could come as a surprise.

She didn’t ask or beg or implore or wept, there was another word for what she did, a word that echoed with one thousand years of silent suffering.

It started to rain and the wind and the rain and the whole universe in that second.

She besought me.