We made a little church of our own when we promised to marry. You asked me when I barely understood how to love you, and I'd been innocent so long that I think the moment you told me you loved me you became ever more desperate to snap me up. Three days after the initial declaration came the proposal. I ran away from you and hid.

You're a terrible boy. Everyone says so. I'd heard the talk since the beginning of time and I'd seen the queue of sobbing girls you left behind you. And yet.... you told me loved me and offered to buy me the best of rings.

I was too frightened to tell anyone and had no confidantes to begin with. I sat upon it quietly and devoured your love in secret and though you believed in no God you respected my God and you took me in the middle of the night to the little frozen shack where you scrawled the words "The Kingdom of Heaven" for we would need no heaven other than ours.

In the snow we knelt and you kissed me and you took more from me later on.

It's colder now though the weather is warm. I fear the snow. I fear the ice. I wait by the window for any sign of your return. Sometimes I get a letter and I sleep on it for days before reading it.

The letters will stop soon, I feel it in my cold bones.

I wear a ring on that finger you promised to bejewel, a ring made of seed beads and it sparkles pink and purple and green. It's a child's ring. It's not a training ring or a place holder. I hope never to feel the sting of gold there.

I sleep in the Kingdom of Heaven now, and it is not one of God.