There was no more transfixing sight than the tears of despair, for which one is helpless to do anything but watch. Perhaps a weaker person would have turned away, but for me it was not possible. And she cried shamelessly, streaming salty tears down her splotched face, dampening both her unbound hair and torn dress. Clawing at herself, she was unable to contain any propensity that overtook her, retching and heaving, screaming and whimpering. Her voice was not natural, for it had an animal's baseness, and instinct kept her pinned to the ground in alternating sways and poundings. I didn’t think so much emotion was capable of being in any one person at the same time. That such an outpour could be so heart rendering and sincere without actual effort to carry on the pain, or final submission into unconscious. But she submitted and rendered to none, and nature was not kind enough to give her a faint heart. So the gasping, sobbing, hopeless shrieking of a desperate soul with nothing left to cling to went on interminably, conveying more powerfully than words their message. I cry out.

She bore the wounds of love. And me? I was an empty shell. I was numb - emotionally void, as if something had wrenched from me all my desires, my longing and my hope. As if all my efforts and strife for this one event had come to an end finally, only to leave me without any other part to call myself. What I had poured my soul into, what had taken from me so much more than I thought I had been able to give, now lay before me, a finished project other than my own. Yet I could lay no claim to it. Therefore, I was left with nothing. Yet.

In many ways I had pitied her as much as I'd delighted in or felt disgusted with her, since she still had things for which she could lose and mourn. She could not contain that part of herself, that woefully idealistic notion of the advantage of humanity's sorrow. She fed off of that faith, preyed on it voraciously. If nothing else, she was a creature of emotion that was uncompromising at her core. The unnamed part. The disembodied voice. Now it is but a whisper, fighting though fading. In every way that made her role stronger and more purposeful, and her being more perfect. I placed my warming hand on her stilling chest, drawing the spark of life within. As I did so, I gave her a farewell befitting her part in my legacy, one she could no longer refute.

"Goodnight, Virginia."