I awakened from my bedroll on the ground to peer between the spokes, the fire dying down. The leaping shadows scattered, and one shade left behind. In the dust, a crumpled form before my eyes. And to my shame, I prayed for someone else's grief. That the loved one dying slowly belonged to anyone but me. The blade the brigands left behind had done its work; you were given no last words. But I can hear you still.

You are the murmur of the cornstalks as they brush against our wheels. The looming clouds on the horizon, the flap of canvas in the wind. You are the blankets wrapped around me as I sleep beneath the boards. You've never left this place and so neither will I, my only love.

I was a girl when we met beneath the Top, a fledgling acrobat, and her newfound confidante. The fortune teller's smile was sad that night, she claimed she saw in us a sorrow much too great, and an even greater love. We must have had a final kiss, had we but known, but at the time it would have seemed to us just one more time. Your light snuffed out over a coin-purse and a coffer with little more than earnings from a single night.

There was no priest, no pastor on our wedding day. We stopped the caravan at sunset on a hill above the plains. Old Samson heard our vows from atop the bally-stage, and his little Jennilee spread flowers in our wake.