In The Garden Of Our Love

I noticed the first flower earlier in the week.

It was the two-month anniversary of our break up when I saw the bud breaking the surface of the garden. The garden that was built upon the foundation of our love. A testament to the bond that can exist between two people.

Do you remember our first date?

I do.

It was over a year ago when I asked you out. It took everything in my power to approach you. I thought it impossible that a person of your beauty would accept the invitation of someone like myself. I realize I’m not ugly, but in no way do I possess the ability to light up a room the way you do. Radiant. It is almost impossible for anyone to describe you without using that word or something equivalent to it.

You said yes.

Certainly not what I expected.

I planned everything as thoroughly as possible. It had to be perfect and thankfully it was. You wore the same dress you were wearing earlier. And you were…radiant. The candle lit dinner. The carriage ride through the park. A red rose and a tender kiss. Fragments of a night that exists more as a feeling than an actual memory.
“You’ve swept me off of my feet.” Words uttered so gently that they had to be sincere. Words that escaped your beautiful lips, breezed in through my ear, and stoked the flame that was quietly building in my heart. One sentence that caressed me from within and brought a warmness to my soul. And within the rich soil of that utterance grows quite possibly the most beautiful garden that man will ever bear witness to.

In the course of a week the one flower has multiplied into many. All roses. All red roses that hold my attention along with your memory in the vase like structure of their petals. Their coloring indicative of blood. Because their beauty is the well of energy upon which my lonely heart feeds. From them I draw sustenance as a bee draws pollen, but the juices upon which my heart sustains itself are of the deepest crimson. The petals are so full that they most certainly nourish themselves from the garden that is our love.

Do you remember the first night we made love?

I do.

We had been together for two weeks when we found ourselves naked upon your bed, but it did not happen upon that night. I fought off all urges so that it would be, like our love, perfect.
We enjoyed a nice dinner and I led you to the bedroom where I had adorned the bed with hundreds of rose petals. Even then I understood their significance.

We made love throughout the night. Enjoying the warmth of one another’s bodies. As I pushed inside you I felt the deep crimson pumping through you. Each time I pulled out of you I felt like the bee taking from the flower. Your warm, wetness felt like the pollen carefully extracted. And as I lay there with you I felt my whole being slowly folding into you. The oneness of our bodies was no match for the oneness of our souls. And as we became one, I felt the deep crimson that is our lifeblood beginning to flow together. It pumped through our body in sync providing further evidence that our love was of the truest nature.
The oneness of our souls can be seen in the garden for it is from but one point that all of the roses’ stems seem to spring. And this one point, I fathom, is probably your heart. And in being such it is my heart as well.

Do you remember the night we first spoke of our love?

I do.

It was a mere month from the date that we had begun to see one another. I turned to you and gave flight to three beautiful, wondrous words, that danced across my tongue and into your ear, which hungered for them to such a degree that it might never achieve true satiation. The thundering rush of your deep crimson built to a crescendo, drowning out all other sounds. All sounds, that is, except for your magnificent reply. The joy I felt delivering my declaration was minimal compared to that which I felt upon hearing those very same words returned to me upon the sweetest lilt ever known to man. Three words that spoke not to my ear, but somehow found a path directly to my soul. Three words that clung tightly together to form one of the most recognizable phrases in the human lexicon. A phrase that had been used since the beginning of time. A phrase that had laid great cities to waste and brought powerful men to their knees. It is upon this phrase that our love experienced its most noticeable growth.

I love you.

Even now, as I say these words, the flowers in the garden seem to stand more full and erect then I have ever seen them. Their color seems to flow.

Do you remember the night you left me?

I do.

Your voice an angry storm of violent words and hurtful accusations.

“I think you’re spending a little too much time at work” is all I said before I felt the brunt of your hostility rain down upon me. All I wanted was to secure our love.

“You’re smothering me.”

Three words delivered without an ounce of remorse.

You accused me of being jealous. A claim to which I took great offense. I always trusted you, even though I knew all of your fellow male employees, who hid behind their friendly façade, wanted nothing more than to get you in bed.

You wanted your space and no matter what I said, you would never return.

I noticed earlier today that the roses were beginning to whither. The deep crimson is slowly turning to black. I watched as loose pedals wafted onto the porcelain surface that holds the garden. To watch them die is to watch our love die all over again.

Do you remember the night I killed you?

I do.

It took you a mere month to move on with your life. I know because I watched you. I stopped going to work and began to spend my nights and days following you. I came to know your daily routine well. I had it down to a science when you suddenly changed it. Changed it to fit Phil into your life.

Phil Sessions. Age 31. Lived at 2357 E. Hampton St. Worked for a law firm. One of three children born to John and Connie Sessions of upstate New York. 2 sisters – Tammie Penick of Rhode Island and Jessica Sessions, a recent NYU grad.

How do I know these things?

When your whole life revolves around the identity of one man, you’d be amazed at the amount of information you can find.

I can see how a woman might fall for someone like Phil. He has those rugged features that adorn so many billboards and magazine ads. He dresses nicely, drives a nice car and has great teeth. But he could never love you the way I do.

It took a mere week before he was in your bed. I spent many a long night watching your house, wondering what was taking place upon the bed that once held our love. I often imagined the two of you with your bodies entwined. The sweat from your bodies filling the room with a musty sweetness. The smell of sex. Sex without love. As I thought of the two of you in our bed, such an odor would waft across my nose making me nauseous.

I camped out in front of your house for many nights. I eventually lost track. Day ran into night. Hours took on the appearance of minutes, as seconds became all but lost in the stop-motion life that existed around me. The sun chased the moon, as the horizon became a kaleidoscope of shifting colors. Day and night became all but non-existent as my world transformed into a constant state of dusk and dawn. Black melted into white and my mind found a home in the grayness that was their child. It was in this grayness that I began to see clearly. And it was in my clearest state that I confronted you and the man you had found to replace me.

You looked shocked to see me. Not shocked – scared. He had succeeded. He had brainwashed you into believing. Into believing that I was a monster, when in fact it was him that was the monster. A great and powerful creature that had destroyed our love. And it was with this realization that I determined I must slay the beast.

I brought the newly bought hunting knife across his throat in a motion so quick and dexterous that the scream that was building in his lungs escaped only as a rush of wind from his freshly opened wound. He continued to try to talk. A horrible gurgling noise escaped his smiling throat. The noise of a man trying to speak with his vocal chords severed. He held his hands to his neck in a futile attempt to close his wound and prevent blood loss. Arterial spray escaped between tightly clenched fingers. I watched the shooting stream all the while keeping time. 1-2-1-2-1-2.

And I wondered.

Wondered if your heart still beat in sync with mine or if it had taken on the cadence of this slowly dying beast that stood before me upon shaky legs. There was only one way to know.
I plunged the knife deep into your chest and felt it tear into the thick muscular tissue of your heart. And I knew. I felt it in the reverberation of your still beating heart. I could feel it keeping time with the deep crimson that pumped through my body. Our love was responsible for the synchronization of our hearts. And as your heart slowed I knew our love would transcend this world and would one day find a home in a place that would allow it to prosper. My first sign came in the form of a rose.

I took your body home with me. I undressed you and laid you in my bath. The sharp white of the porcelain a deep contrast to the crimson that rolled off of your body. I closed the drain to prevent any of the crimson from escaping. And I watched you. Your light skin seamlessly blending into the porcelain bottom of the tub. Your face showed no emotion, but I could read your rapture in the rich coloring of the crimson that surrounded you. I slept peacefully that night.

It was when I returned to my bathroom the following morning that I discovered the flower. It had just begun to grow. Its tiny flower grew from the wound. From the wound that led directly to your heart. I touched its diminutive petals and smiled. It was a message. Sent from where, I don’t know. Sent from whom, I have no doubt.

I watched in wonder as the week progressed and the flower grew at an exponential rate. Vines grew off of the solitary stem and soon more flowers could be found blossoming upon the island of your body. The sight was nothing short of … radiant.

I watched the garden grow and prosper, but as the week pushed on I began to notice something troubling. The measure of the crimson in the tub was depleting. I scrupulously covered the drain thinking that the crimson might be escaping through tiny fissures in the ancient rubber stopper. But this did no good. The level of crimson began to slide lower and lower every day. It was at this point which I determined that the flowers were feeding off of the crimson that surrounded them. It was the lifeblood that helped to sustain our love.
By the end of the week, the crimson had all but vanished. A light sticky residue was hardly enough to maintain the garden and without the crimson the flowers began to wilt. I wept upon the realization that our garden was dying. There is but one way to save our garden.
I climb into the tub.

The hunting knife knows the skin and quickly sets to work.

The black gaping maw of my open wrist speaks to me in the language of crimson. It rhythmically flows onto the cold porcelain surface. A waterfall of red that surges with every beat of my weakening heart.

I concentrate on the flowers. Studying their withered masses. They glow with a brilliant light, yet they do not seem to recover from their dilapidated state. For it is not the flowers that radiate, but my eyes. It is my eyes that see the all-encompassing light. The light that has come to take me to another place. A place where our love can flourish.

And it is…

Radiant.