"Through Cocoa Colored Eyes"--original storyor

I feel like I should say this before you dive right in on what was my last story for Fiction 1 this summer.  It is not a story for everyone.  The theme is rape and the tone is rather violent as well as a language level that may be offensive to some readers because of the amount of profanity.  With that I said, I felt this story needed to be told this way and no other.  I do hope you enjoy, and once again I would love your feedback.

“Fuck that uptight neurotic crap Christian College, who the hell needs this stinking shit anyway!  I don’t need that G-d damn fucking football scholarship anyhow! G-d damn coach was a fucking faggot pussy who kept looking at my dick anyway!  I can make it on my own!  I don’t need anyone!” 

My deepest darkest thoughts, yet I couldn’t verbalize any of them to anyone I knew.  My bad-tempered conservative Christian friends and family would never understand I fucked it all up when all I wanted to do was live my life my way.

            The car pulls out of the driveway.  I head toward my bedroom.  “Finally a full week by myself; no g-d damn brothers and sisters, I hate them all. No more bitching parents yelling at me all hours of the night and day. No more fucking anything for seven whole days.”  I reach under my mattress to grab the pill bottle with ten Vicodin pills in it.  Each of them is 200 milligrams a piece.  I take two, grab the fifth of Vodka hidden in the closet under the mounds of mildewed sweaty jockstraps and football gear from last fall’s triumphant season and slug both back with ease. Exactly what I need.

            I grab the phone. “Hey, yeah I hear your back home.  ‘Jesus what is that crap? Do you even know what the hell you are doing?” What happened? “Like I really give a flying fuck about your pathetic life.”  Really wow, unfreaking believable right?  “Who the fuck do they think they are, right” Hey, by the way are you free tonight. ‘Oh, sweet Jesus that incredible ass is so damn inviting.  It’s nearly begging for it.’  Maybe get a pizza or something?  ‘Nothing but a hot hole needing it bad, those milky thighs wrapped around mine.” Great see you by nine then ‘You fucking whore’. Bye.”

I run back into my bedroom, rip the lose stitches on the bottom side of the mattress and dig out my joint.  Thanking Jimmy for supplying the pills and dope. I walk onto the front steps, light the match.  Take big hard drags. My head hovering somewhere in space, I walk back into the house change my t-shirt, lose the underpants I am wearing and pull my ratty jeans back on.  My dick slapping my thigh.

“Bet they were fucked at least once while at college fucking cracker.  Stupid assmonkey perky rose colored mouth needs my dick shoved in it. Fucking leave my father’s church all high and mighty white trash assbag nothing, with a full dumbshit scholarship. Whining, ‘I couldn’t find work, I had no food.  What was I supposed to do’, fucking fuckersucker lightweight!” 

The end of my joint I walk to the garage the snow is starting to fall.  I find buried in the Corvette I was trying to rebuild my bottle of whiskey from last year the bottle half full. I grab the grease covered Styrofoam cup from Sunoco fill it to the rim and down the son of a bitch in one gulp.

My dick stirs in my pants “Oh sweet baby Jesus, those eyes.  So inviting, fuck me. You know you want to.  Do you hear what I am saying?  I need you so bad.  Do you need me? How can somebody be born so attractive.  That mouth just begs to be abused.” As I grab and rub my crotch.

I see the white Chevy Chevette pull into the drive as I walk back upstairs.  “About time you fucking asshole jackoff.”  “Hey good seeing you. Really sorry to hear about college” as I open the door.  “Well you know how it is three part time jobs and I didn’t have enough to buy peanut butter. 

But how have you been David?”  “Not bad. ‘Fucking liar.’ College is just great. ‘G-d what the hell is this all about.  It isn’t some bullshit happy hour. I just want to fuck.’ Take your coat off, make yourself comfortable. ‘You fucking cum dumpster douchebag. G-d what a fucking hot body, certainly no lardass by any means.’ “Want a Pepsi?”  “Sure thing, David.”

“So you been going to church? ‘Christ Almighty, can you be any more fucking lame?” “Well actually David, I uh…well I uh um… converted.”  “To what may I ask?  ‘Really like I give a crap what this asshole does.” 

“Well uh…umm how do I say this I am studying to convert to Judaism?”  “Motherfucker, shit my dad is going crap you a fucking kike.”  My left hand swings out and it hits that face palm side facing out. My senior ring leaving a clear mark.  I hit again and again and again.

I see the blood, there is no turning back.  I grab the t-shirt on their slim frame and rip it off, throw them to the floor, my foot stomping them into the beige colored carpet.  “Please, David don’t!”

I grab my hunters knife in my hip pocket and slice those tight 501 jeans clean off.  Their nothing but rags.  “G-d David NO! NO! NO!”  “Shut the fuck up”, I slap again straight across the mouth, my senior ring splicing that full pink mouth and the blood flows unto the carpet.

“G-d please don’t.  David please don’t.  I said clam up my foot grinding their chest into the carpet.  With my knife in my hand I slice off that snow white tight underwear.  “Oh that mothafuckin’ supple white ass” as I drop my pants.

My erection bobbing in front of me.  I bend down and reach under the sofa I graze those full white mounds of ivory flesh and a bead of precum lays glistening on the white of it.  DAVID, DAVID, DAVID, DAVID, NO!!!  The scream is deafening.

 “Sweet Jesus fucking Christ.  There just begging for it.”  I grab the gun under the sofa and start pistol whipping that head.  Six short fast blows.  “You’re such a fucking waste of space, you fucking loser.” As I mount that fragrant sugary ass dry.

“Thank g-d the noise as stopped. Do you hear me, you need more, you crave it David” As I violently pound into that sweet pathetic dumbass.  “Fuck, is that blood there.” As I run my fingers through that soft mousy brown hair.  “Shit, they aren’t conscious. What the fuck do we care about this for it is about the fuck and only the fuck.  Blowing your wad man.  They had it coming.  These things happen in life.”

They move a little, a slight moan I grab that syrupy spicy leg bend it towards me, that arches that smoking fine ass.  Easier access.  They stir.  I pull hard.  Hear a bone snap.

 Fully awake. “DAVID, what the fuck are you doing? David please.”  The tears begin to well.  I bash that bloody head into the floor, six times.  “Oh my god, the eyes are rolling back.  They will never survive, now what the fuck” as I leave my semen in that sultry ass dripping down that milky thigh with blood.

I run to my bedroom naked, rip the sheet off the bed roll them into it.  Pull my pants on. Throw them over my shoulder. Walk outside in to the garage. Open the trunk to the car. Throw them in. Jump into the car. Turn the ignition.  Screaming out of the driveway.

“Do you hear me?  You have to get rid of that body!  Can you hear me?  It was never to end this badly.  What the FUCK.  Do you hear me, get rid of the evidence.”

Roaring down the dirt road to the nearest Amish field I bring the car to a sudden jerking stop. Pop open the trunk.  Grab the unmoving, barely breathing body and walk the ninety paces to the creek and dump the body in the woods. 

Breaking their arm in the fall from my shoulder to the frozen dirt. “Fucking bullshit, douchebag, dumbass, cumwhore.  Why did you EVER have to come home?

As he began speaking Elliot lowered his small coca colored eyed and stared intensely at the ground.  Hugging himself tightly, a continuous flow of tears fell down his face.  “Ladies, gentlemen, and the staff of The National Center for Victims of Crime.  This is not a story about my being sodomized.  This is not a story about Hate Crimes.  This is my personal story about forgiveness.

"A Very Public Kiss"

This was written over the summer for Fiction ....hope you enjoy it

One sentence was all it took, one simple sentence to know who the man in the sunglasses is. As he pulled Chris and I back, the other bank robbers locked the door. The doors were plastered in bullet holes. There have to be at least three bank robbers. The man in the sunglasses lost his grip on me, and Chris picked me up from the floor into his muscular arms. As I was holding him, I looked at the man in the sunglasses. He looked directly at me. I was trying so hard to restrain my breathing.  He doesn’t move at all; he just stares at me. I wonder if  he really does recognize me.

My mind starts to stroll slowly back to the bank lobby where it all began.   I cannot take my eyes off of the man in the sunglasses as he walked into the bank that August day.  I close my eyes ever so slowly and lean into Chris. Tears start to come from my eyes; my breathing becomes more uneven.  The hostages in the office  look at us. I cry for about five minutes in silence. Good thing I don’t have to explain anything to anyone. “One Mississippi. I have to calm myself. Two Mississippi. It is him. I should avoid him as much as possible. Three Mississippi. I love Chris so much. Four Mississippi. I have to stay quiet. Five Mississippi.”

I open my eyes, realizing the carpet has blood stains that we are sitting on. I can’t take my mind off of the man in the sunglasses. “There has to be something to distract me from what I know to be the truth of the situation. Chris …Chris …. Chris.”

He and I had been living together for a year now.  But we are not affectionate in public.  He is a police officer. We can’t afford for anyone to know from the precinct about him being gay.  Chris being with me would be thrown off the force. I am their newly appointed District Attorney who also happens to be closeted.  It would be a huge scandal. The only person I wanted to tell was my sister; she was okay with us dating each other. Thomas, Chris’s partner on the police force, also knew about us. They have been precinct partners for about four years and have been through a lot together. Thomas once told me Chris was someone special and had gone through a traumatic event.

 I remember asking Thomas about it but he always said “You have to ask him.” When I asked him he changed the subject or just ignored me. I asked him about a hundred times a day for a week until he broke. We were in his apartment living room on the couch.

“I had been in the police force for two months” he started. “Thomas and I were on the freeway when a black SUV Range Rover went speeding by at ninety miles an hour. He turned on the sirens and we were on the chase. It didn’t last long. After about ten minutes on the high way, both of us thinking it was a drug dealer trying to run from a bad sell or somebody who was doing something really stupid, I remember telling him to hit the back of the SUV.  The driver would lose some control and the chase would end. He did what I told him. The driver lost complete control flipping over about ten times before landing on the roof in a gully. What we found truly shocked us.” He paused and took a couple of deep breathes, trying to hold back more tears.  Looking at me with his puffy red eyes, he continued, “It was a mother. Her name was Amelia Smith. She was running away from her abusive husband as we later found out. The crash killed her instantly.  Half of her body was twenty feet away on the freeway; the other half, still in the Range Rover. Her twelve-year-old daughter was thrown around so much that she looked like a human jigsaw puzzle.”  Tears were streaming down his face.  “The baby in the backseat couldn’t have been more than a couple months old.  Still strapped in his car seat, he had succumbed to  shards of glass,” he said in a shaky voice while hanging his head, unable to elaborate on any details. “The baby is what got to me the most. He reminded me of my mother having a miscarriage before the baby was born. That baby in the Range Rover reminded me so much of the horrible loss from when I was just a little boy, I just broke down.”  His dark brown eyes never left mine “Am I a monster for killing an innocent family who was running away from an abusive father and husband?” he asks me. Looking as if he’s afraid I’d say “yes” to his question.

Crying, I didn’t how tell him what he needed to hear me say. I then took a deep breath and shook my head. “What happened on the freeway was not your fault.  You couldn’t have known who was driving,” I said. Coming closer to him, I put my arms around him. “I know one thing,” I paused for a second. “You can never, ever be a monster, darling.” I say it almost in a whisper. I grab both of his watery cheeks and pull his lips to mine, kissing him deeply. He holds me and kisses me as passionately. We lay on the couch with him on top of me.  It’s hard to explain but we have this connection words can’t begin to describe. When we have sex he always leaves my knees shaking and my sensations swimming. Mostly, we hold each other for hours. We feel safe in each other’s arms. “Did you ever arrest the husband?” I ask him. His head is on my chest. “No,” he says after a while holding me tighter. “Why?” I caress his dark brown hair. “Because this guy is the Commander in Chief of the police department. I think he was even running for mayor if I remember right. Jonathan Smith”.

I had heard rumors he was a real bastard, but it caught me by surprise Jonathan Smith abused his wife to the point that she ran away.  “Are you sure?”

“Yeah I was the one who pressed charges, but they never went through.” He says. “Rumor has it that he has an illegitimate son,” he continues and my eyes widen in sheer horror. I try to remain calm seeing that his head is on my chest. I hug him even tighter, One Mississippi…

My thoughts are interrupted by a very loud argument going on in front of the teller booth right outside our door.

 “Let’s kill some of them.  How about one or both of those pansy faggots,” one of the bank robbers screams. My best guess is the robber screaming was close to the one robber who was shot before we were thrown into our office prison.

“Calm down I have some other plans, including what to do with those vile pussies in their Brook Brothers suits,” the man in the sunglasses says, his voice echoing through the lobby and in my head. It was then I noticed his Gucci shoes, the label on his sunglasses was Prada and those pants were Armani.  It is him, I am almost positive of it.

 “No,” the bank robber screams and starts shooting at the windows of the offices.

Everyone screams and lays as flat as they can on the floor while bullets pass over our heads. Some of the bullets I hear flying close to my ears while others hit all over the office, knocking the debris onto all of us. Chris is lying on top, of me shielding me with his entire body. He is trembling while holding me. I think he is afraid we are going to die.  I wish he carried his gun when he wasn’t working, but where does that wish get us now?  The bullets stop coming from the lobby, and you can hear the rest of the bank robbers trying to take control of the situation. I am holding onto him for dear life, trying to hold back my tears at this near death experience, trying to remember six weeks ago.

Chris had invited me out to dinner at Spiaggia’s, Chicago’s premiere Italian restaurant, and, without a doubt the most romantic place on the planet, but where the tab could easily run into a few hundred dollars just for two. The frescoed dining room was just perfect and our table sat in a window alcove overlooking the twinkling moonlight cityscape.  He had the cipolinni and potatoes and I had the steak with shishito peppers.  Violins were playing and candles twinkled like stardust on our table; it was breath taking. He looks deeply into my eyes, his hand nearly touching mine on the table.

 “My darling, you know how very much I love you.  I have from the minute I saw you in your dark blue Brooks Brothers suit at the precinct right after applying to be the new D.A.  I know I want to spend the rest of my life with you, to fulfill, to cherish and to grow old with you.” 

He reaches into his suit coat pocket pulls out the classic Tiffany’s blue box tied with a white satin ribbon.  Tears flood my eyes.  He takes my hand.

 “Sweetheart, will you marry me?”

  I answered yes. 

At that very moment, his hand still in mine, the Commander in Chief Jonathon Smith, whom I had only met twice, walks directly up to the table. 

“Chris, never expected to see you here,” he said callously” his sapphire pinkie ring catching the candlelight. “This, by the way, is Bridgette”, he added with a disgusted snort and a flip of his hand.  She was dressed like some common street whore who did coke in her free time and we assumed she was.

“Pleasure to meet you Bridgette.”

  “Chris, uh, who exactly is this nice gentleman in this lovely faggot melodrama,” sneers Commander Jonathon Smith. 

My mind went completely blank. I could feel the sheer hate in his voice for the two of us.  As now he had something on both of us, his prized officer and new District Attorney, and we, I had the feeling, were going to be blackmailed from here on out. I don’t remember how that conversation ended, I just knew I wanted to desperately kiss Chris and couldn’t.

After dinner at Spiaggia’s, we went to our Halstead loft apartment. As soon as he opened the door, he started kissing me. We lost all of our clothes on the way to the bedroom. He throws me on my back onto the bed. He handcuffs me to the headboard.

 “I’m the sexy cop and you’re the very naughty but ever so hot robber I can’t resist” he smiles his one eyebrow arching wickedly. He gets on top of me and we start kissing again. He  undoes one of my handcuffs long enough to turn me over never breaking our hot-blooded kiss.  Clicking the handcuff back in place on the headboard around my wrist, my back connected to his stomach. He starts to kiss my neck, my back and…..I whimper and moan in delight, as quietly as possible but fail miserably many times…..

He …... thrusts…… I moan so does he. He turns my head.  Kisses me hard. My hands holding the bars of the headboard. The handcuffs singing loudly to Chris’s impassioned thrusts. Chris puts his arms around me. I groan lovingly in pleasure even louder. So does he. It seems like hours. He never slowed down. He then collapses on top of me. We are both out of breath. I spent the whole night handcuffed to the headboard an engaged man.

The image of those six weeks ago brings a smile to my face, even now, surrounded by the scattered new gunshots outside the office we are locked into.  A few loud screams of terror inside our office and outside as well.  Suddenly, there’s a huge splatter of blood on the window of the door to our office.  Blood oozing, filling the window pane to the door.  We can see nothing.  The window is frosted to begin with. Now, it’s just blood covered.

I knew I couldn’t let that bastard Jonathon have the upper hand and even begin to try to blackmail Chris and I.  But I also knew I had to find the reason Amelia fled that night she was killed in the automobile accident and especially after that night at Spiaggia’s.  What I needed to do was talk with Amelia’s younger sister Melanie.  Sitting at my oak desk at the precinct, I dialed the number [phone ringing] “Hello Ms. Rytledge you might remember me, Aiden Foster.  I was a good friend of your sisters in high school and now I am the new District Attorney.  We here at the precinct are trying to put to rest your sister’s case.  I was wondering if you could spare some time to talk with me about her relationship with Jonathon.”

“Oh sure I remember you Aiden, always so tall, handsome and well dressed.  Things for Amelia were really bad at home.  There were as I am sure you are aware of quiet a few emergency room visits and some broken bones.”

“No Melanie, I had no idea but will have try to get those records if I can.”

“You should Aiden.  There were also a few hushed up police reports of domestic violence that I believe were made quite by bribes and what not that go into full detail about the severe abuse my sister suffered at the hands of that prick Jonathon.  There should also be some Children Service reports because the oldest daughter Celia had mentioned her mother being beat up by her father at school.

“Good grief I can’t believe this paper trail you are talking about.  I mean he is trying to run for mayor.”

“Yeah I know Aiden, it is crazy because if half of what he did became public my God it would be a huge scandal.  Anyway the night Amelia left it was because she couldn’t face the reality she might lose her children even though those children were never hit, they were investigating how violent Jonathon really is.  Amelia couldn’t deal with the idea of losing her children.  Personally I hope you nail the bastard to the wall, because I also hear that he may be involved with money laundering, taking bribes, altering police evidence and a mountain of crap you wouldn’t believe.  Plus there is this whole illegitimate child rumor too.”

“Melanie thanks so much for everything.  I will try to keep you posted on what happens with the case you’re a god send.  I’ll talk to you soon.  Thanks again.  Bye.

“Bye Aiden, you get that bastard good.

 I can hear the screaming sirens, the bull horn squawks, the door to our office prison is opened.

By the time I gathered all of my information on Jonathon and turned it all in to the mayor as well as our state senator four and a half weeks had passed.  Boy did it create the scandal.  Jonathon was fired and facing criminal charges.  The house, the car, the boat all repossessed. His dead wife and children had been exhumed.  His private records were made front page news and the jury selection process was beginning.  So was the hunt for this alleged illegitimate child.

It is Thomas and seven other officers from his force outside of the bank trying to get control of the situation I walk directly into the bank right up to those Prada sunglasses and rip them off that strong masculine face.   “I knew it, you fucking bastard.”  It was Jonathon Smith. “It’s come to this, huh, robbing banks.”  “No Aiden you stupid faggot it has come to this” as he pulls out his Smith and Wesson revolver.  I grab his arm wrench it behind his back as one of the other robbers lays already dead on the floor in the bank.

We wrestle, struggling each other to gain control of the gun.  First standing, then rolling on the floor as Thomas comes charging in.  I finally kick Jonathon in the head, get the gun full in my hands and stand to my feet. I cock the hammer

“Good lord Aiden what the hell are you doing” Chris says.  I am paying back a debt for my Aunt Amelia and my mother.  I pull the trigger and shoot him right in between the eyes.  “You fucking bastard, were never were a father to me.”  I grab Chris by the shirt front, pull him into my arms, him and I intertwined, kissing, not caring who sees us.

While my father Jonathon Smith lies dead on the bank floor, his sunglasses lay a feet away, his face coated in his blood. 

“Just remember both of you sissy faggots, your time is limited, don’t plan on leaving alive today.”    I look at a stunned Chris, “I have wanted to kiss like that from the minute I met you all those years ago” and kiss him again in the middle of the bank.

"More Than Snowfall"----Original Stories

This was written over the summer semester for my Ficition 1 Class I hope you enjoy.

West Eighty-First Street was unoccupied on the twenty-first of December as the temperature in Cleveland dropped to ten-below overnight. It had not been this cold the entire year.  Somewhere, in the heart of the night, the snow originated in heaven to descend from somber skies. It had no means of falling, but fall it did. Since November you desired so badly to see snow but it had simply not fallen. Why did heaven’s gate wait to give you what you so desperately wanted?  Already there was two feet of it on the ground and it was only 7:20:30 a.m.  When did the snow begin its mystical descent to create this winter livery?  Frozen, muddied snow lay dumped in indiscriminate and tedious heaps. Curbsides in downtown, swamped in filthy sludge, made squelching protests as their slushy contents were distributed anew by the few brave commuters who wandered the streets bundled up like overdone Eskimos on their way to Arctic. A few trees and shrubs attempt to delay the inevitable, gluing snow to their boughs in the further recesses as downtown.  Workers trudged off to their cubicle in the office.  Were you still here when the snow started swirling among the brittle ebony branches of the old Oak tree on the tree lawn?  Or perhaps you were already departed, the weight of survival too great to bear to endure on, our turn-of-the-century home acting as the portal for that journey none of us had prepared for but you knew was somehow coming?  Did you really know it was coming, like a deft- handed monster under a child’s bed waiting to attack?   How did we even grow to this aspect in our lives where we depended on those vows of ten years ago?  The parquet inlay in the teak rosewood floor with its Art Deco design embraced the metal feet of the hospital bed that somehow you took to so straightforwardly; could you no longer hide from me how very ill you were all those months that lead up to this?  I kept you home as you wanted and away from the hospital room.  I was caring for you in our refuge from the world. The one place the outside world did not exist.  Protecting you in a neighborhood that was crumbling around us, no longer the quiet Polish neighborhood we moved into but now a street filled with violence, crack, dealers and thugs.  The neighborhood was losing its battle as well.

            Your delicate, fragile ninety-three pound, five-foot-two frame, engulfed in the swaddling clothes of the chenille bedspread, fell and rose slightly with every breath you took, me anxiously expecting the next one to follow.  Your hair had greyed considerably in those last three months, and your facial features as hollow, sullen and sunken in as they were, even with that adorable beard that earned you your very first nickname “Fuzzy” made you look similar to those who had survived months in Auschwitz.  Those twinkling eyes that once dazzled me beyond mere words were now deep, soulful, calm, and somber. Gazing empty, void of any life, any sparkle how it hurt to see you slip so helplessly away from me.  The color once was a piercing enchanting brown but had become burnt steel and I felt myself drowning in them, suffocating, for even I knew what was coming.  I never admitted that I wanted the end to come, the suffering to end for your battle to end against the disease that took you from me, from my arms, from our home. 

The sunlight of the dawn of that December day flooded the dining room from the leaded-glass window with a warmth, an almost visitation of the sacredness of divine love.  Love beyond words, love beyond bounds, beyond the mortal. Have I ever known this love before?  Did I realize then how much I loved you?   How will I ever learn to live without it? You seemed so brave and courageous in the beginning, Oh it will be alright I promise you said, just a few days and I swear things will be back to normal I.  Did you know in the essence of your being then that statement would never be true?  The padded antique chair engulfed in the rampant despair of the parquet floor which also held your bed to its earthly confines was at your bedside as you slumbered. I read to you before your eyes closed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone because you never found time to read it on your own.  I sat the entire time, guarding your sleep from what I could feel in the air that day. It was this abundance of all creation and I not wanting to miss a moment of it, of you, of us.

Your Kaposi Sarcoma Lesions that swallowed the inside of your legs that needed to be cleaned, the blood soaked dressings needing to be changed became your own personal Shroud of Turin.  I, your loving Mary Magdalene and blessed Mother all rolled into the devoted lover.  You should know I fell asleep in that chair holding your bone thin hand that first night, and every night that followed all but one.  How could I have fallen asleep after ten straight nights at your side?  Did you need me away from your side for you to slip away like sunset before the moon rises, fills the sky, sending a moonlight radiance that only it can provide?  Did you want to spare my watching the life slip away from your eyes completely?  That precious breath never to come again and leave you.  Were you aware of how violently ill you were the night before you died?  How I held you in my arms, sitting behind you, supporting you as you threw up an entire wash basin of blood for over an hour.  Then you were passing out never to recover.  The battle was at its peak, and my darling, we were losing.

            Did you know of your incredible beauty, your endless skill, your undeniable knowledge, your uncanny wisdom, your immense strength that drew me to you like a mouth to the flame?   It is what kept me at your side and does even now.  But when did you start to withdraw from the life we knew, the life we shared and created for each other?  When did my full-time job become making you comfortable at any cost, trying to control the unbearable unending pain and letting the silence of peace and light flood our house on West Eighty-First Street in a tsunami that engulfed us so you could simply sleep tranquilly.  Was the television even on those eleven days?  The destruction of mankind could have happened and we would have never known about it.

  It was all about you, the way it was supposed to be, the way I wanted it to be.  Would we have even cared if the whole world was ending?

 I knew my personal world was and I had a front row seat to it.    Friends of ours said they could smell fresh cut roses in the house but there never were flowers in the house those eleven days.  A few commented that they could hear the beating of angles wings.  Did you hear them?  Did you see the angels so many heard? Did you smell the roses? Did you see the balls of light at your bed the entire week?   Is that why it was so peaceful?  What I did for you was what I had promised to you on that scorching July day when we exchanged our vows and you broke the champagne glass in the handkerchief. But why did I let you sleep so long, so quietly?  Was it the only thing I could have done?  Was that all that was expected of me?  If I could only turn that clock back to those days in 2002 and have the conversations we should have had about what we both saw, what we both shared, what we both knew but could never talk about. If we could have put words to what we were both going through maybe I wouldn’t feel like I never had the chance to fully accept what happened. 

It seemed to happen so suddenly.  It was over all too fast.  You were buried before I had time to fully accept what had happened, fully comprehend you were gone forever.

To sit in that chair just one additional day and embrace your bone thin hand again before the heavens parted, the otherworldly cherubs descended and surrounded the bed in spheres of delicate angelic rays accepting, embracing, loving and engulfing you while I alone slept.  I slept those last few precious seconds away and for the longest time I could not forgive myself that one very fatal sin.  But was it a sin, or did you need me away from your side long enough to slip away?  I regret only sleeping. I love you still.  Even now I can feel your presence. Please don’t ever leave me. Just come, visit me. Hold my hand, when it is my time let me be with you.