I had not been back to Philadelphia until she fluttered into my life, intoned her plea, and passed away, delicately, the way a flower might exhale. A powder like pollen showered from her wings, and I knew then that I must go. It did not take long. The trains are very fast these days.
When I am asked for hep it is not for me to turn away. It is not what I do, though perhaps in old age I have forgotten kindness, traded it for habit. My daughters used to tell me that, would tell me that a good deed from me was not as valuable as the good deeds of others. Then of course I left them, and the parts of me that shine, those bits I took with me.
I said the train was fast. I found the house, it was not too much trouble. An old thing, neglected. A golden powder shimmered in the window. I saw the nets of soft cloth, the tattered wings, the pins and glass frames and the smell an old man makes in the kitchen. And so I broke the window with my fist, and they flew from the house, fled upwards to the sun, those golden, showering, shimmering lights.
