The nights don’t get easier. They are still as lethal to illusion as ever. Lethal too to every truth that rings false to the hooded Ruler who demands obedience to their dominant mood. The heart weakens under the spell of their dark magic. She can’t recall a single hour when she felt glad or at ease. The skin forgets what it feels like to be touched by the rays of the sun. And wasn’t the whole body once touched, held in an embrace the sun itself had to envy, since she didn’t know what the moon knew, she wasn’t witness to the two lovers entwined in each other’s arms beneath the stars? What comes as a gift comes with so much more than strings attached. Comes like a strange ship to a new land, to bestow trinkets of silver and gold and then to pillage and slaughter and traumatize the native soil and the native souls. What comes as a gift comes with the knowledge, whether affirmed or denied, that it will not last. The expiration date is unreadable, but it is certainly there, smudged on the bottom of the glass bottle. It is all a man can do to hold fast to a few ancient lines. Blessed are those who mourn. Sorrow is better than laughter. But worst are the nights when tears do not come, when the face stays frozen in a grim posture of joyless resolve. So let the tears come, and let them burn clean. Not to make the nights any easier, but to give them over to what is real. For it was not too long ago we held each other in an embrace we forced the sun to envy, and now each of us is alone, each and every night. And only tears, in all their wordless power, acknowledge the truth this knowledge brings.