Devotional Offerings
In the spring he brought me posies of flowers. All sorts.
Hot-house blooms and dainty little wildflowers that he must have plucked from the sides of hedgerows– all of them tied together with ribbons. Each delightful bundle brought me the feeling that my heart itself was smiling. A physical token of our love.
I set them in jars and vases of fresh water and adorned the window-sills and end tables with a tableau of colour. Placed them beside the little portrait of him on the mantel above the fireplace, with a candle on either side, as if the whole affair were a papist shrine blessing some deceased saint. With the candles to bless our future and the Eden fresh flowers of spring to ensure our fertility.
It did not matter then that the bouquets would all eventually turn brown and whither. Fresh water could only hold off their inevitable decay for so long. All moisture and verdant life gone from the blooms so that the once bright ribbons hung limp and sad about their stems; useful only to gather them up and toss the bundles away.
Then there came a time when the fresh flowers stopped coming.
No longer were their enough reinforcements to fill the empty jars.
I left them on the window-sills and end tables. Left them until the green-hued waters seemed to pulsate with strange life forces of their own.
Still, the occasional bouquet came to my temple about the fireplace. Still the gods of my devotion were appeased.
It was the day that the final vase of blooms on the mantel wilted, the heads of the arrangement bowed in their last rites that I did it. The gods of my love no longer contented with his waning devotion.
He appeared at my doorway with empty arms and no offering.
I bent my head and allowed him to enter. Perhaps the day’s posy was simply concealed out of sight.
We sat side by side on the loveseat. The empty vases and jars filled with murky waters surrounded us like a congregation waiting for the Eucharist.
I waited. Nothing came.
Instead he started to speak. The words he gave were not the expected flood of affection.
No love left his lips.
I listened as if the air were filled with incense so thick that the world itself were muffled.
This could not be.
I could not allow it to be so.
I stood and approached my mantel-piece shrine where his image took precedence. Flicked my eyes between him and his image. It and him. Paper and flesh. The past and the present.
There was no future there now.
I took a final gaze at his photograph. I let his love filled stare flood my eyes and shut them tight to hold the image there.
Then I fumbled for the iron cold handle of the spade we used to scrape away cold ashes from the stone base of the fire.
He was talking still as I struck him. A squeak left his mouth at the force of iron on bone.
I struck again. Blind. My eyes still closed, pressing the past to my eyelids.
Devoting.
The banging of metal on his flesh took on a hymn like rhythm. I saw his face in my mind as hot blood splattered the alter of our love.
Those words I would not hear are forgotten now. He will adore me for eternity.
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