This is the hand that winds itself about the pen; and this the hollow, found in-between the stretch of thumb and forefinger, that is suddenly awkward in its nakedness, in its vulnerability. For he has not touched anything quite so intimately since her passing, and bolts of flowers are now springing from the ashes of his mind.

Outside, the asters have tucked their heads into their sleeves, for rain looms heavily upon the horizon, and the setting sun promises to fall shortly. He observes a tucker of primroses through the window as they sway toward the ground with the tail-end of a breeze; a battalion of daisies soon follow. And still he sits, pen in hand, eyes fixed on the vague tangle of sky and earth beyond the comfort of this many paned, many shadowed room. He watches the dance of cloud and tree-top, and feels a loosening inside his mind; an unnatural fumbling that reminds him of what he has never had. There are those who say to drink of the cup of sorrow is to perceive a world of pain sanctified by sweet mystery: but he has drunk of the bowl of bitterness, and it has only left a rancid mark upon his tongue, and further down, a raw staleness.

And still he is empty, despite Mary's crocuses and snowdrops, despite the presence of a robin's twittering lullaby outside his bedroom door. He is suddenly twelve; no! Eleven, or ten and three: he forgets, and in the back of all these numbers a voice tells him he is much, much older. Yet the garden sleeps, despite his prophecy of magic.

My Dear Mary...

So he began the letter once, and now it is too late to finish it. It has begun to rain, and a layer of lace has sprouted upon the page by means of the window; blue and white and that shade of gray that reminds him of the past-before-the-opened-door, runs the story of the ink.

And out in the valley there is a grave, with daffodils growing wild about it. He thinks he will go down now, and tend to mistress Mary's flowers. Yet the pen still rests in his hand, and the shutters clang terribly in the breeze. He is stiff from sitting so still, of remembering and reconsidering. For even now, even after all these many Springs, he still remembers the girl and the door; the roses and the curled laughter that evoked a sliver of green within his own dull heart. A quickening of life is what she stirred with a fingertip.

This is the hand that once held a bud, a pen, a hand; and this the hollow that never kissed a woman's throat. And so he sleeps once more, without the promise of a second birth; the lion bereft of his humble lamb.