Onyssa
They came, as I knew they would, and I let them, as they will never understand, and the whole visit cost me exactly one thing I had not priced.
It was not the wall they crossed, since walls are for armies and they were four wet creatures with love where their sense should be. It was not the river, which has already apologized to me. It was the kneeling. I have watched mothers for an age, screaming ones, bargaining ones, mothers who threw themselves at me and mothers who threw their gold, and I had a category for every one of them until this one crossed my nursery floor slower than grief moves, knelt at her child’s bed, and chose not to touch her, because the little one’s peace was worth more to her than her own hands’ relief. Something about the watching sat wrong in me for the re
