The True Shame

With a deep breath, she pulled on her coat and tiptoed out of the cozy warmth of her home and into the icy night. There he stood, nonchalant as ever, leaning against his car as if nothing was wrong. Nothing was wrong, not really. Or perhaps there was just too much to put into words.

He looked up as her footsteps drew nearer and cast his cigarette aside. His smoking was a disgusting habit and she had previously refused to tolerate it, but she hardly had the right to chastise him now.

She stopped a few feet from him and looked him over. He was the same, more or less. He looked as if he had been working out – preparing himself for the dating scene, no doubt. He needed a haircut, as per usual, but he was just as lovely as ever. She had been told in the past that others did not find him attractive, but she always had. She saw the beauty in him. He had a kind soul, a great desire to do good, and an enchanting smile. His laugh used to ring in her ears for hours after they’d parted, along with his low, melodic voice. She always told him what a shame it was he was killing his voice with smoke.

He stood up straight and looked her in the eye. She took a step toward him but then jumped back, startled by her actions.

“What’s wrong?” He asked. After only hearing his voice in her head for months, it was an odd sensation to hear it in real life. She realized with a pang of disappointment that she had imagined it incorrectly. It was much lower than she remembered, and much smoother.

“Nothing, I –“ she stopped, unable to articulate what had caused her to step back. Habit had tried to force her into his arms, but logic had stopped her. She shuffled her feet. “I was going to hug you,” she admitted, “but I wasn’t sure if I should.”

“You can hug me,” he replied, a small smile playing on his lips. Everything was always a joke to him, even when she felt she could not smile to save her life.

“I don’t know if I want to,” she said in a small voice. She always felt very small when she was with him. Something about him took away not only her breath, but her voice. In better times, she had spoken to him through actions, through a reassuring hand or a simple smile. She had shown her love by making him her first priority, by caring so deeply for his happiness that she would do anything to preserve it. She did not realize until it was much too late that words were equally important.

“Okay.” He patted his pocket, nervously locating his cigarettes. “What did you want to talk about?”

What didn’t she want to talk about? It had been a year since she had seen him; she wanted to talk about what had changed, what had stayed the same, his family, his life. She wanted to know if his dreams had changed, if they were as spectacular as ever. She wanted to know when exactly he planned to take the world by storm.

“I, I wanted to tell you something,” she stuttered, staring at the hole in his jeans and the cancer between his fingers.

“Well,” he said, “not to be rude, but could you spit it out? I’m freezing my ass off out here.” He chuckled, taking a long drag from his cigarette.

Everything she had planned to say, the passionate words that burned inside her dimmed, and she lost her voice. “I just missed you,” she murmured.

“You just missed me,” he repeated.

“Yeah,” she replied lamely.

“Look, I don’t want to be a jerk, but you could have just texted me.”

“After all we’ve been through? That deserves a phone call at the very least,” she joked humorlessly.

“And yet I got an email begging me to come over,” he scoffed, clearly becoming frustrated. “What is this all about?”

“I want to make things right.”

“There is nothing to make right,” he said. His forced smile showed the fault lines in his calm façade.

“Don’t say that,” she begged. Her voice cracked under the strain of emotion. “Don’t say there’s nothing left between us.”

“There’s not.”

“How...How can you say that?”

“Look, it’s been a year. I’ve moved on, you should too.”

His words hung between them for a long moment. This was not how she anticipated the conversation would go. She did not understand how he couldn’t care when she still did so much.

“I cried for a month after we broke up.” Her voice began a whisper, but was growing higher and louder with every word, disturbing the silence of the night. “I would wake up in the middle of the night to check if you’d called, stay up way too late hoping you’d change your mind and talk to me. If you had seen me the day after it happened you would have felt horrible. You would have taken me back. If there was nothing between us, I wouldn’t have been so miserable without you.”

“And whose fault is that?” he snapped. His stare was unrelenting and something inside her broke. Her knees felt weak and grief and guilt raced to suffocate her.
She could not meet his eyes. She bit down on her bottom lip hard to keep herself from crying out.

“It was mine.”

“It was yours,” he replied slowly, nodding his head. “It was your fault. Nothing had to change, nothing had to end. You killed it.”

So she had.

“I had to,” she breathed. Her lip was bleeding where she had bitten it and the salty blood sat unpleasantly on her tongue.

He had been in the process of lighting a new cigarette when she spoke. The match between his fingers stayed quite still and burned down to his fingertips as he stared at her.

“You had to?” He spat. He stood up straight, his cigarette still dangling between his lips, and towered over her. “You had to commit murder?”

“There was no murder,” she whispered. Salty tears now escaped her eyes and nearly froze upon her cheeks.

“What would you call it, then?”

“A mistake. A mistake that we made and I took care of. It’s over! It’s all in the past. Why can’t we leave it there?”

"Because I loved you," he said bitterly, looking down on her. "Because I would have taken care of things and you didn't give me the chance."

"I loved you, too!" she insisted.

"No. You didn't."

"You have no right to say that." still crying, she advanced toward him, pointing a shaking finger into his chest. "I loved you. You have no idea how much."

"If that was true," he replied, his voice quivering slightly, "you wouldn't have done it."

"I did it to protect you! I wasn't about to let you throw your life away. You deserve more than that."

"And you?" he asked. "Don't you deserve better?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're going to hell for what you did. And so am I for not stopping you."

"I don't believe in hell," she whispered.

With that, she turned on her heel, leaving him standing alone with his convictions.

On her way back to the house, she stepped on the cigarette he had earlier cast aside, crushing the tiny ember beneath her foot. How curious that something could so easily be snuffed out.

She entered the house and locked the door. Only once inside did she realize how terribly cold she was, for she could not stop herself from shaking for several minutes.

Once composed, she tiptoed quietly to her bedroom. With great care to remain silent, she removed her coat and shoes and slipped beneath the covers. There, silence and loneliness overwhelmed her and she found herself wracked with sobs. They came in waves of pain and desperation as she tucked her head beneath the pillows to muffle the sound. However, her efforts were ultimately in vain, and she soon found her own cries echoed in the dark.

Forced by nature, she let go of her grievances and rose to tend to the cries. They emanated from the adjacent bedroom, where her smallest and greatest grievance wailed.

In a practiced motion she drew the child into her arms. At once, its complaints ceased; it cried only for being awoken from its dreams without a smile to wake up to.

It was a lovely child, with a healthy complexion and dark chocolate eyes. She had overheard the nurses in the hospital lamenting the shame that such a handsome child should be a bastard.

The true shame was that it needn't be a bastard, that its mother was simply more in love with its father than with the child itself. The true shame was that she had chosen to lie so that its father could follow his dreams, all while she sealed her own dreams neatly inside a little box, never to be opened again.

The true shame was that she had sacrificed her happiness for his, only to find that he was scarcely happy at all.

He believed himself hell bound, an eternal sinner. How glad he would be when he met his maker and discovered that his only sin was ignorance, that he would be allowed to live in eternal joy. Perhaps she would meet him there, and his gratitude for being saved from hellfire would inspire him to forgive.

Perhaps something higher would forgive her trespasses, and she would eventually be able to forgive herself.

Love is not rational, she thought as she returned to bed and rocked her child to sleep. Life is not kind to those who love and those who love are not always loved in return. Love makes people do senseless things and bring great pain upon themselves.

And sometimes, those who are fools for love are doomed to carry their great pain for all of their lives, quietly mourning all that never was and all could never be.


End.

Fall of the Concubine

They were just two attractive white kids, roaming the ghetto for danger and prostitutes. They had no intention of stopping or employing the whores they hunted, for that would hardly be a respectable pastime. They simply sought to find adventure in their beige, suburban lives. Unafflicted by consequence, they traveled through the slums, pointing out beggars and drunkards and the much-desired temptresses, with their platform heels and neon shorts.

And what should they do when they came upon a whore? They would but merely drive away, pointing in the mirror at her misfortune of circumstance. Affluent and promising, they never dreamed of stopping to engage, only to look upon the meek with undeniable superiority.

Perhaps, they proverbially wished to remind themselves of all they had, to bear witness to the poor, the weak, and the desperate in hopes of finding meaning. But alas, their goal was only to get high on prospective danger, as if viewing the lives of the ragged was enough to boost their street credibility, to make them feel alive.

With so many "what ifs" between them and so many nights spent searching the ceiling for the answers to life, they just needed to feel alive.

How funny that death would be the one to do the job.

They were two fools in love, or the modern version of it, unmoved by the plight of the layman, destined to be more than average in every endeavor. They feared authority only because they feared for their status. What would the neighbors say about the children caught on the bad side of town; had they caught infection, or worse, poverty, in the course of their travels? They would be social pariahs, cursed to a life of rejected invitations and snide remarks.

No, they were just there to look, not to touch and not to buy, but to see, to err on the side of danger, but with a solid layer of glass and arrogance to protect them from the beasts that lay inside.

How disgusted they must have felt when fate made the decision that they should have a close encounter of the whore kind.

With a dull thunk and a low moan, she fell. Fearing for his wheels and paint job, the male rushed from the car, bravely instructing his frail counterpart to stay behind and, under no circumstances, call the police. The consequences would be monumental.

With a quivering hand, he removed his lettered jacket and kneeled to check the pulse of his repulsive victim. Had he a compassionate mind, he may have recognized that, despite the difference in skin tone and class, the hooker's heart beat beneath her breast with no disparity to the way which his did beat

Alas, his considerations reached only the end of his nose and the tip of his only tool, and with disgust and effort, he moved the whore to the edge of the road to die.

The female companion, moved to near hysterics, waited loyally inside the vehicle. She sobbed, not for the crime they committed or for her companion's dishonorable acts, but for possibility. Should the whore die, there would be only a dead whore. Her blood would not be on the hands of her true killers, but on the cold sidewalk in an unimportant part of town.

However, should the whore live to see the morning, the pair would live in terror. Should she be intelligent enough, the whore could memorize the license plate number of the car that maimed her. She could go to the police with a description of her almost killers and the lettered jacket now resting on the hood of the car. Their lives would surely end when the whore made her move, and then who would become the royalty of the prom?

She could not allow such a travesty to transpire.

With swift movements, she extricated herself from the vehicle. In seconds, she was standing above the whore, who was quite still and faintly blue upon the pavement.

In the trained movement of a soccer star, she swiftly made a connection between her high heeled boot and the peasant's face. Again and again she kicked, until the pavement was warm with blood and retribution. Only when she her cheeks were red and her boots were stained with cheap makeup and brain matter did she feel lover's eyes upon her back.

She stopped immediately and coolly turned on her heel. Instead of seeking comfort in an embrace or reassurance in a word, she snarled at him. Her eyes were fierce with a lifetime of rage.

"Take me home now," she ordered, avoiding his gaze as she tidied her hair, "and don't look at me that way. The cunt got what she deserved. She made a mess of my shoes."

Bad Poem

I once made a list
Of all that I wished
And trusted it full to my heart

All my lies and my dreams
And frivolous things
That fools always wish,
So the matter would seem

Upon the lost list
Of all that I wished
Was the hope
That from mind I could part

The mem'ry of you
Of love fragile and new
Locked now so deep
In my heart

I wrote out a list
Of all that I wished
And in time it did fall apart

But fore the dawn came
I whispered your name
And left it
Alongside my heart

Roses Doomed

Church bells sounded, clear and absolute in the frigid winter sun. Black heels clicked on the faux cobblestones, and awkward young men shuffled their feet in their Sunday shoes on their way into the church.

It was a typical affair for such an atypical passing. He was too young, too passionate, and too full of life to be robbed of it. But life was not fair, and death was its cruel mistress, always lurking in the shadows, waiting for the most inopportune time to strike.

And yet, the usual rituals applied. The girls wept into crisp white handkerchiefs, leaning into the shoulders of their male counterparts, who sat rigidly in the pews. American boys through and through, they did not weep. Rather, they let their arms wind around the shoulders of the fragile classmates, neighbors, sisters and strangers sobbing next to them, distantly noticing the sweet aroma of their hair and resolving to later destroy something beautiful.

The guest of honor was displayed in all the glory he had never earned, but had now somehow achieved. Immortalized at eighteen, he had never had to prove himself, but was already a hero. Everyone simply knew he would have changed the world, had he not been so swiftly taken from it. Pristine in his best church suit, he was absolved of sin and cherished so dearly, if only for the next few weeks.

Amongst the crowd, behind the stone-faced family and the adoring fans, she sat. She was a tiny thing, shivering in the drafty cathedral and her gauzy dress. One hand gripped the pew, her knuckles turning white, and the other rested on her abdomen, calming the monster within. Her plain hair was pulled tight to the back of her head, pulling the skin of her face back and bestowing upon her an expression of constant surprise. Or perhaps that was simply how her face remained these days. She did not cry, but she did not smile either, not at the priest’s most reassuring words, nor at the bittersweet anecdotes glumly recited by the friends of the mourned.

Had anyone in the surrounding pews known her, they surely would have wondered about her, or perhaps even worried. Had they known her, they may have asked how she was coping, if she had gotten any sort of chance to say goodbye. If anyone had noticed the skittish girl who could not cry, they may have asked her how she knew the deceased. If they had known anything, they would have gently patted her shoulder and asked her what she was going to do.

If they had asked and she had known, she would have told them, but as it happened, she hadn’t the faintest clue. It was already too much for her to sit there, eyes focused on the vessel left behind by her lover and to contain her screams. It was already too much to wake up, to breathe, and to realize what she had lost and what she now had to lose.

Across the crowded room, a number of young women wept for the departed. Old friends, childhood playmates, high school loves, and a few unmendable broken hearts dabbed their eyes and wailed their regrets and sorrows. She could not shed a tear. The choir grieved through song, singing of heaven and mourning, imprinting hope upon the hearts of those stricken with anguish and guilt.

The pallbearers lifted him gently and took him away to rot in his newfound glory, and the congregation staggered out behind. Red-eyed and white faced, they left with an odd sense of clarification, and a vague reassurance that this too should pass, and life would continue, for a time.

Blinking in the afternoon sunshine, the mourners lingered for last embraces and condolences. The last to leave, she stumbled on the stairs. She put herself right quickly, but stood, very quietly and solemnly, for quite some time. She stared at the sky. She cursed God. She cursed herself. But mostly, she cursed him. She cursed him for leaving so suddenly. There had been no closure, and there could not be. She cursed him for leaving her with a shattered heart and a dull ache deep within her core, an ache that would not be ignored and could never be forgotten. She cursed him for dying, leaving her to the wretched task of staying alive.

Perhaps a tear did escape her eye much later, as she stood at the edge of his fresh, damp grave. Perhaps a tear did fall, only to be caught by the soil that covered him and absorbed by the roses doomed to die with him. Perhaps she wept. Not for him, but for herself, her loss, and their problem that lingered. She fell, dirtying her dress and staining her skin with clay, and rested her head against his grave marker. One hand covered her eyes as she wept, and the other clutched her abdomen, wishing the dull, willful ache that resided there to disappear.

The sun retreated beyond the horizon and the moon made the tears shine on her face. She had resolved to stay until she cried herself to death or a resolution became clear, but the piercing cold and overwhelming exhaustion that consumed her inspired a change of heart.

Partially composed, she stood and brushed herself off. With one last wayward glance to the past, she turned to leave the cemetery, exiting death’s realm in search of a new meaning in life.