I stood in silence, images flashing through my head as the crimson stain spread across the floor in a grotesque pattern. Like some garish inkblot test it transformed at once from the image of a summer dress in a breeze, to a clawed daemon ready for the kill.
The first paper towel to land was almost lost in its mission, as the wine overtook it. Many more towels were to follow, and stupidly I turned to watch her throw them down in an ever expanding blanket of red pulp. I watched as her delicate hands floated each sheet to the floor, and for the briefest moment I saw her wrists as the source of the stain, her wrists open in long jagged wounds perpendicular to her elegant wrists. And at once the image was gone. I looked to her face, her eyes, so alive and content.
Or so I thought then. I go now to rest a handful of roses on her grave, as I have done for the last five years.
It's raining. I have always loved the rain. I carry no umbrella, and my clothes beneath my long duster are near to being soaked. I enjoy the feeling of the drops on my uncovered neck, their gentle caress down my face. We used to dance in the rain.
My tears, as appropriate in the cemetery as they are, become lost in the rain.
Her grave is simple and separate; she rests beneath a great Willow in a corner of the grounds. Standing before her grave I am overcome, and drop to my knees there in the soaked earth, begging her forgiveness though I had done nothing to her. Had I done nothing for her?
Gently, as I would were she merely sleeping, I place a single yellow rose, for friendship. My throat ready to swallow upon itself, I gently place a single red rose, for love. With an artist's care and a lover's touch the two roses are surrounded by seven white roses, one each for the years we have been together. Gathering myself, I sit against the tree, behind her, as I had so many times before. I think of her body relaxing into my arms as we would just watch the sun rise in the shallow valley below the cemetery on the hill. We would talk of inconsequential things, every little thing and any little thing. We would discuss the beauty of the moment.
Now I tell her of the beauty of the moment, of my longing to hold her again. Of the emptiness in the life we had, of my weakness without her, of how she still has a place with me, within me. I can't help but shed my pain. I express my guilt and ask her over and again why she wouldn't come to me. Nothing she could have done could have possibly compared to the torment my waking days bring me now.
I feel guilty and selfish because I could do nothing to stop her, or help her. I feel guilt because I failed in my attempt to join her and I live to see the sun and our blessed moon and feel their gaze upon me. "Where is she?" They ask, and as I walk in their rays I have no answer for them.
In the rain I am hidden from their prying light. The light I had loved with her for so long. The heavy cloud above continues to shower me with it's protection, but from it's vantage point the sun can see over the city, it's people and buildings, it's trees and parks, the small valley, right up to our tree. It can see that I sit with her, but it still asks me, "Where is she?" and when I can take no more of the innocent interrogation I leave her, promising to return when I can.
When next it rains.