You always said I was a silly girl, easily distracted, more easily frightened. Why then, do I find myself smiling now? The cobblestones are softly crumbled beneath me and the subsiding night is gentle, like a lover as it leaves me. I hear running water and to me it sounds like ripples of laughter, nothing left foreboding about this place.

I know that I am dead, and I have not forgotten why, Romeo. In this forbidden place, that memory is still mine to hold, to cradle in my broken hands. I loved you in my way; I love you still. My belly is warm to the touch, and the blood there is not a surprise, like the child we never had.

I do not know what it is but I can feel it coming, in the lifting clouds and rise of morning; I can feel the rush across my soul like surfacing from drowning, like breathing again after a sleepless terrified night. I am alone and for the first time unafraid to be so. I do not miss you, Romeo.

When the sun crests the shattered temple dome, I am standing in the midst of a city dissolving into light.