Our Lady of Sorrows.

Moonlight casts its long gothic shadow over the half-stripped, humbled plane trees. Another figure, bundled in a frayed cloth coat, is here with you in the darkness. You sneak a look – and looking back is your own face – tight-jawed and terse, wrinkled with weariness. The same frigid air pools in both your lungs, though years have fallen away. Here you are, scarred scapegrace, dragging your filthy bones on past, and past this angled edifice. And should you cry, the gables only echo back a faithless keening murmur, mocking, seething. 

A child may slip behind that wall, and with a final burning look from wide and frightened eyes be lost to you forever. Will she feel your useless love pressed into her soft back as she is led away? Will she still feel it through memory’s coarse cloth, the cold ache of loneliness, or fireside warmth on calloused little hands? No matter how fierce your anger and longing, it will always be both as real and insubstantial as shadow. If you lie down here, the brown dry leaves will crush, and cushion you.