Shooting Blanks

I met you in the cold sour orange fruit juice of my contemplation. You were that sugary unstirred bottom of my ineptitude. I forgot that spoons were made for a reason and spoons were also cuddles, that spoons were warm fuzzy creatures that would grow cold when not minded like reptiles bemoaning the once ever present sunshine. You were that orange sunshine and I forgot to clear the dark cloud that is me, I forgot to stir the juices of our relationship and then it was all over with you at the bottom of the cup and I already ingested in my own permeating dark thoughts. I painted that grimace on your face with every passing day I ignored the bubbling happiness spreading inside of you and before long I had poisoned you against the woman who simply wanted me to bask in the sunshine of her love.

It is my fault that I made you bitter, my fault that I made you stay too long without my caresses that the orange in you had turned to bile. You had meant to open your quirky mouth to crack a joke at my forlorn face but instead you opened your mouth and spat out dismembered limbs of your jumbled thoughts, careening between happy and sad, should I go, should I stay, your delicate hands folding and unfolding with indecision.  It is my fault I made you doubt the independent woman in you as you had to lower yourself to my level and reason with this impossible child throwing a tantrum with his oppressing silence screaming the roof off our relationship. Your eardrums swelled with all the noise and your screams joined the fray desperately trying find a point of equilibrium. Your eardrums burst in a cacophony of shattering glass and fits of jealousy much as your suspicions were all here say. This obstinate child denied you closure, with every breaking piece of our furniture, I nursed a twisted hope a piece would find my head and crush my brain to porridge and brine to decorate this place.

This place was meant to be our home away from home, as a man and his wife have to leave their parents' homes and make their own, we had carved this place from brick and stone to call it our own. We furnished our home in colour and smiles and built a backyard to hold reserves of compromise for the fights yet to be fought, we stored the excess of our love in hidden pockets in our hearts for the children yet to be born but already part of our lives. We built this all, you and I but at the end of the day, the 50 you gave outweighed my own.

I cocked my gun and shot with the zeal of youth and you embraced the seed that was never to sprout. For years we tried to till your fertile fields and for years we went back to our beautiful home, without a harvest to show for the backbreaking work of the two unfortunate lovers in a race against time. I knew the fault was my own because a man always knows these things after a while. I got myself tested behind your back and the result was not a surprise. I had been shooting at my lover with blanks but with intent to kill.

And how do I tell her? How do I tell her I failed as a man? How do I uproot the happiness she nursed in her heart without killing her? How do I kiss those lips without feeling keenly my failing as a man? How do I face my lover with nothing to give…but darkness and loss and dark cloth to cover her head? I am sorry for your loss I would say. Your children didn’t make the trip to your warm embrace, they died in my arms and there is nothing I could do to save them. Would you find it in your heart to forgive me, I am only half a man. No can do.   

May darkness swallow me!