She had waited until her husband and children were far away, and had driven into the snowy woods, and ended it. Just let it all go.

She had wanted the pain to stop. The heart-hurt. She slept her way into death, only waking when the Highway Patrol found her body.

She was cold, rigid, frozen, when they found her.

Someone like that, said the patrolwoman. You'd think she'd have everything to live for.

She tried to speak, to tell them that that was what made the pain unbearable but, like someone caught in a bad dream, she could not make herself heard. She screamed, and no sound came out. She watched as they took her body away.

She sat by the side of the road, in the snow, all bodiless and afraid, waiting for the happiness to start.

Her eyes are grey.

Her hair is straggly and wet.

Her fingers are stubby.

The nails are chewed and broken.

Her teeth are crooked, jagged things.

Her sigil is the hooked ring.

One day her hook will catch your heart.

Describing her, we articulate what she is and why she is: when hope is past, she is there.

She is in a thousand thousand waiting rooms and empty streets, in grey comcrete buildings and anonymous hotels.

She is on the other side of every mirror.

When the eyes that look back at you know you too well, and no longer care for what they see, they are her eyes.

She stands and waits, and in her posture the pain no longer tells you to live, and in her presence joy is unimaginable.