The Spider

Silver is my colour, the colour of constellations and fond memories.
The colour of sunlight through frosted glass, of my hair and eyes. Oh,
how I wish I did not love you so. I promised I would never do you harm,
but my love for you? it goes on and on and on.

Our last night together is drawing in and the medical staff have at
last left us alone, to breathe and touch and talk the hours away
gently. The air in your bedroom is sweet and quietly comforting like a
soft summer breeze, gently warmed after days of quiet and methodical
bustling. This is our haven and it has been for some years now. I
confess we do not have many visitors, but since we received the
confirmation of your impending death a few have made the journey,
rested a while and departed. In time the doctors have taken me aside,
outside this room in long gloomy hallways and spoken quietly of your
sickliness. Your long history of chest complaints and asthmatic
condition. Their hopes of your recovery have receded daily until today
when they finally gripped me tightly in a bare, sunlit room and bade me
to sit with you awhile and wish you goodbye. This I am only honoured to
do.

You drift to and fro, sometimes still beneath clean sheets, breath
trembling through your body like a bird flying in the rain. Sometimes
you toss and turn like a sparkling salmon caught on a line, writhing in
sweat, reaching out in the gloom for my hand. I wish I could creep in
beside you and hold you but the discomfort you feel makes this an
unbearable trial so I sit on my wooden chair close to you, talking
softly.

There is a peaceful moment when I hold your pale hand, close my fingers
around your skin and feel for faint pulsebeats. I can comfort you. I
can protect you.

After a time your eyelids flicker open and at once your eyes are bright
with pain. You gripped me tightly, easing your fingernails into my
flesh. I run my fingers through your hair, soft and damp like rain
soaked flowers. They cling to my skin, knotting around my fingers,
tensing and sliding apart. A memory like stinging nettles; tangling my
hands in her hair, in my mouth, eyes dark with love and skin heavy
until we found ourselves asleep, nestled in a grey dawn.

I could never make you love me enough, never enough to satisfy my rage.
A cloudbreak on a rainy day. When I slept alone all those nights I
dreamt of birds caught in mahogany boxes, locked and buried in a wood.
I can hear them singing now. The birds are calling to me.

During the long autumn days I spent alone in the garden it seemed as
though events were leading me to this day. Your ill health had plagued
you throughout your adult life. And it all started with a few droplets
of brown chemical in your food. I was disturbed at the ease I felt, and
as the months went by your health deteriorated rapidly. During daylight
our home was a hive of medical staff, but at night I would sit with you
- we would talk and I would read to you, all your favourite books; help
you to sip the weak broths I created - filled with goodness. You will
never understand the joy I felt in my heart. At last, to have you all
to myself. To reap the rewards of devotion.

I don't remember a time when I did not know. How many nights spent in
your company I longed to grab your neck and squeeze it until the bone
poked through your skin and the vessels burst in your eyes, your
smiling, laughing eyes, your touch, soaked with affection, languid with
a dark, burning love. I wish I could have been honest with you - in
truth it was not about you. We love each other, of this much I am
assured.

I battle daily with this black, pulsating rage, this fog of jealousy
and my fists on your face, your mouth, your eyes and skin. The
imaginings of a diseased mind one might say, but your beauty like
flames and despite my prayers it would not fade to ash, but even now
retains the sensuality of glowing embers.

Your looks of surprise and sorrow, all in my head.

Your confessions mean nothing to me now as I hear them, breathless in
the dark. I have never doubted you and it is uncomfortable now to think
of you being gone. Your words shine in the dark, this unnatural clarity
of tone like an electric light, insistent. I stroke your hands as you
unburden your soul. My strange bird of paradise. We begin to
weep.

I wonder if you knew what this love was like? A storm of rage, of
jealousy. To find peace in our house was the most intricate
intertwining of love and hate; the truest expression of joy. to be
disappointed, to be thwarted. To know forgotten love, in all its
fleeting beauty. I will send you bunches of forget me nots every
day.

Weeping, trembling fragile love crumpled like paper, extinguished like
a candle. I fixed it, I made it better.

Now I can see it. The life draining out of you. You are speaking but I
cannot reply. This slow exquisite death. And my whispers, professions
of love, fragile, trembling, weeping love. There is silence now, and a
golden light. A body drenched in stars.

It goes on and on and on.