Forget how it started. They don’t know how it started. By the time Montague and Capulet set strife aside they were childless.

Montague made himself sick when Lady Capulet ended the affair. Friends said she got religion, mooning in her villa in long woolen shawls. At first their love for their children melded with the strength of their passion, Lady Capulet toying with the idea of a child part Romeo, part Juliet, half brother/sister to the son and daughter they lost. But it was it inconceivable. They were only in it for the warmth they no longer found at home.

Capulet had bad habits and bad dreams. He mourned his daughter’s death and his wife’s infidelity. He wished he could put it all behind him. He had an illuminated copy of Marco Polo’s Silk Road Travels: rainbow bridges, lines of children under paper dragons, inns where you could eat without spending a fortune. Too bad his health and business affairs kept him home.

In the market yesterday he chanced on Montague’s wife. She knew about her husband’s betrayal, suffered, was lonely, and leaned on her friends. When she met him in the market Capulet usually mumbled a greeting and continue on his way. This time a smile lit her eyes and he paused. Something in the basket she carried. She offered a glimpse.  Kittens. She couldn’t bear to drown them. He watched them wrestle a skein of yarn. Perhaps Lady Capulet . . .

But no, he was taken by a crowd at the foot of a makeshift stage where the self-proclaimed what? Prince of the Church? –Giuseppe Borri was running his mouth: “Six months ago I was in the gutter, begging. No use to anyone. Now, I stand ready. –Let any man or woman look me in the eye and deny it. The New Jerusalem is at hand.”

Lady Montague ambled off with her kittens. Milk carts rattled on stones. Old Montresor hovered by the stalls. Last year Capulet bought Amontillado off him and never got around to paying. The fool was so senile you could say you paid in advance and he owed you a cask. You could say you were Fortunato and he wouldn’t know the difference.

Gerald Yelle’s books include The Holyoke Diaries, Mark My Word and the New World Order, and Dreaming Alone and with Others. His chapbooks include No Place I Would Rather Be and A Box of Rooms. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts and is a member of the Florence Poets Society.