The fact or state of being penitent; contrition for sin committed, with desire and intention of amendment; repentance.
He knelt on the floor, in their bedroom, as he had so many times when she was on the way home from work, enjoying his every anxious moment. When she came home, her heels would sound loudly against the hardwood floor that made his knees ache, and she would pry from him secrets he didn't know, cruelly, mercilessly, relentlessly.
But not this time.
That was their favorite game: he had to guess what it is that she wanted him to tell her. The interrogation thing turned upside-down. While she tortured him, an evil glint in her eye, he struggled to keep his mind clear enough to think of something she would want. What did I do to deserve this, he would think. Nothing. But she enjoyed it.
Not this time, though. This time she wasn't coming home. Home: the word echoed emptily in his head.
He wondered why she had gone, but it didn't really matter. This time he had deserved it, deserved it most of all--but she wasn't here to enjoy it. And that made all the difference. He didn't even feel the ache in his knees.
In ten thousand years, the dripping of his tears will splinter the wood; in a hundred thousand, they will wear a hole in the floor; in a million, they will bore through concrete; but they will never reach her heart.
Copyright (c) 1998 {hamlet}Ophelia