Mater

She had been crying in this exact way for five hundred years — the tears always the same three drops, always falling in the same direction, the face always tilted at the same angle of surrender that is not surrender but its iconography. What arrived to stand beside her was the same face, younger, or after, or before — the distinction mattering less than the fact that she was still crying while the other had already stopped. Joy had not replaced grief. It had simply arrived without asking whether there was room.