RED

Addicted, addicted to everything about her…her touch, her smell, her laugh, even her burnt toast.

She used to love doing things for me. Cooking, cleaning, making the bed, taking out the garbage, answering the phone. I’ve been ungrateful.

“I never said thank you for that. Now I never have a chance. May angels lead you in”

She didn’t have to go. She didn’t have to die. She didn’t love me. She didn’t need to. She could live without me. But what about me?

“I can’t live with or without you”

I couldn’t live with her, knowing she’d never love me and I couldn’t live with the person I would be without her.

“Nothing win and nothing left to lose”

I could drown in this song. How many times had we listened to it and marveled at it’s maker.

“There are better composers than me”, I used to say

She giggles, runs her fingers through my hair.

“I love you the best.”

Maybe it was just things she heard in movies. Things two people are supposed to say to each other when they’re in love. The expected. The rusted wire used by many to perforate the silence which true love deserves.

I remember the last day we spent together. There was a most gorgeous sunset. The sky as red as her blood-no-not nearly as beautiful.

I don’t remember what she was wearing or what her last words were. But I know she suffered, the blood said so. Trickling out of ebony, into almonds, over lashes, onto porcelain. That’s the last thing I could remember-the redness of her blood.

And now I’m going to be caught, caught and punished for killing her.

I’ll plead insanity. It wasn’t me, I swear, it wasn’t me!

It was the wire that did it. The wire, the barbed wire.

________________________________________________________________________

THE END