For a long time, even before the bad thing, Taiye felt plagued with, with … “shame” is too blatant and not quite insidious enough a word for the feeling that she wore, draped over her shoulders like a water-laden blanket. There is a way that she can look up at you through heavy-lidded, dark wells for eyes. It will fill you with this unassailable desire to unburden her. She doesn’t know it, but it was this very thing that endeared her to her lovers. The magnetic gravity of the planet that is her.
