Love was a promise made of smoke in a copse of frozen trees, a bone cold and older than our bodies slowly floating in the sea. Every morning there were planes, the shiny blades of pagan angels, in our fathers' skies. Every evening I would watch her hold the pillow tight against her hollows, her unholy child. I was still a beggar shaking out my stolen coat among the angry cemetery leaves when they caught the king beneath the borrowed car, righteous, drunk, and fumbling for the royal keys.