The Toymaker and the Widow Spider

The toymaker said to the widow spider, “Why is it you no longer weep for your husbands, so long dead?”

And the spider looked at length out the window, but did not answer. The sleet did the talking, little pebbles of ice dancing along sidewalks. To fall and bounce and bound away. To melt. Such is a love lost.

Then the widow spider looked back at the toymaker. “And you,” said she. “Why is it you build such soldiers and marionettes? Yet you never give them voices.”

“There is a keen sort of tragedy in silence,” the toymaker explained. He said this as if it somehow justified everything.

“Ah,” said the spider.

And the two friends lapsed into a hushed stillness, sitting in a room, looking thoughtful, as the storm bruised the flower petals outside.