Petula was a woeful girl, listlessly wandering in her bleak garret, pondering over her many musty volumes of poetry, scribbling out sad rhymes of her own at her cluttered dusty desk. She dreamed of grey days and black Ravens, her imagination full of terrible sad tales and broken , lonely hearts.

She’d sit in her window, sighing and gazing mournfully out over the town, never bold enough to venture out into the sunlight…Petula would only dare leave her tiny bleak apartments on the cold and wet days to try to sell her poems to the nearby publishing house (who more often than not would scoff at her works and send her away in tears), buy a meager basket of wine and bread, and whatever new books by her favorite poets she could scavenge from the corner bookseller.

Petula’s parents did not understand, nor did they approve of her writing or her dreams of becoming a published poet, and finally they sent her a rather scathing letter informing her that this life was NO life for a well-bred young lady…That unless she returned home to settle down, find a proper husband and take her proper place in polite society, her monthly allowance would immediately be cut off.

Petula could not imagine such a life for herself, and stubbornly refused, ignoring her parents threats and carrying sadly on as always. As always, forever writing poem after poem, all of which were rejected, leaving her penniless. And winter came….the few sticks she would burn for warmth, and the few crumbs she could find to eat could not sustain her. Sitting at her window, Petula sighed her final sigh and met her end at last, unpublished, but steadfast in her choice to write, no matter the cost, be it death itself.