“Her voice was jeweled,” they say, in hushed tones, so as not to overhear each other, but it is futile; their shallow and dreary whispers overspread one another in dramatic undulations, such that it sounds as though one voice rings, a unified and emboldened voice.

“Sunrise filled her eyes.”

“There was silk in her words.”

Growing further heartened, and ever more whimsical, the comments sound relentlessly. The speakers begin to fret and fiddle as they watch her resolute coffin, blotting at tears that rise readily to narrowed eyes. Women dive into the crooks of their quivering arms, men straighten themselves solemnly and paste their gazes to the ground; bemused children are quieted frantically and instructed plainly to release any secreted tears.

Only one does not speak, nor does he cry, nor does he tuck away his gaze or swallow his expression. A blank and beautiful, a raw and emanating, pain is palpable upon his face. Carved into his expression is a longing – a sweet, whole and dreadfully genuine longing – that passes unseen and ill-noticed by those around him. He stands trembling almost imperceptibly, with his pooling eyes fixated on the graying coffin before him, before closing his eyes. The whispers cannot be banished, but his mind fills nevertheless: images scurried through his memory. There she was, lively and seeming entirely improbable a creature now. She spoke, she laughed, and her voice was jeweled and throaty. She blinked, and he languishes momentarily in the loss of her bright golding eyes, the ones that were full of sunrise and shone with glistening temptation. She spoke – goodness, she spoke – and the words she uttered were silk, or perhaps flitting angels. In any case, they throbbed with magic.

He reopens his eyes. It is breathtaking and heart-rending both, in the single twinkling, and he is nearly garroted by the pain. She is gone. It does not seem likely. It does not seem real. After all, she is his eternal. She is beauty, and beauty cannot die. She is innocence, sweet and enlightening innocence, and how may innocence perish? She is an everlasting, a perpetual and infinite, glory. She cannot fade. She cannot rise, the angels cannot claim her, for he has not yet finished basking in the purity she sheds. She is not gone, she is not.

So why, if she is not gone, do his eyes wetten? His soul tears warmly within him, and tears begin to prick.

“She was a creature of kindness and heart,” they say.

“She will not leave our hearts,”

“She will forever be remembered for her virtue.”

He rises, too lightly, as though he has begun already to join his love. “I should like to speak,” he murmurs, and his voice is arid from neglect. The crowd settles into blatant impatience and beckons him forth. He pays no heed to them, even as they whisper officious reassurances and emit sighs of assumed understanding. When he steps nearer to her coffin, he draws to a halt and turns to peer at his audience. They glance at each other, wary of intrusion and appraisal. It slays him, but he speaks, “My darling¬ lives.” Glances are exchanged, heads are quickly dropped. He resumes, with force, “My darling lives. She lives in my every smile, my every tear and laugh and memory. She fills my soul, and I see no one but she. She is….dreamlike. I can see in your hearts that you resent her for it, but she is a seraph, and she does not see the dark as I do. Or perhaps she sees as much as I, but seeks the light of life as well. Do not pretend, I implore you, to worship her. Do not diminish her purity by bringing secreted vengeances and sinful envies to her grave. Though you revel in her passing, I blame you not, for you know not, have experienced not, a mutual devotion quite as keen as ours. But, should you sit today with any less than the sweetest of adorations and the most heartfelt of pains for my love, then please do not insult her memory. I must request your departure.”

He stands for a moment, glowing under the ardent and finely-tuned intrigue of his audience.

A woman rises in her seat. In her doughy face set an unwavering grimness, she folds her arms thickly over the cocoon of blankets that is her baby, and spares not a smile before she leaves.

Then a man, impeccably polished, with molten eyes and a scowl at close hand, follows suit.

One by one, then in startling numbers, the crowd departs from the humble convention. Men and women, children; the aged and the green, the jaded and the raw; the wealthy and the impoverished; all arise and make for their homes, hardly sheepish, but taken aback just the same.

When all who wish to leave appear to have done so, there exists not a single onlooker to determine with astonishment that, by Lord, even the queer and fresh-faced little man who sung the praises of his darling not moments ago seems to have strode from her coffin as well.