Till Death Do Us Part

The red rose burned in the vase of water. How long has it been since the pedals could be seen through the flames? How long has it been since the ordinary became extraordinary? How long until the extraordinary will become revolutionary? How many hours have I sat at this table watching? Watching and waiting as the dancing beauty of the red flame (now turning blue) burns an image of perfection into my retinas. Has it been hours, or merely minutes since I lit that rose on the table? Since I brought the rose to your house? It couldn’t have been hours, no... minutes maybe. Seconds even.

And no, I don’t regret what I've done.

The trick to removing the bloodstain from this four hundred dollar rug is to concentrate. Wish the stain gone long enough, and soon you'll forget it exists. The easiest way to defeat something is to pretend as though it were never there. The easiest way to erase a bad experience from your life is to hold it secret. The more people you tell, the more people will be standing there with a knife ready to blackmail you with it. A red rose pedal falls onto the wood table, a miniature inferno, scolding the chestnut. The glass vase expands the fiery image, making the small fire into a danger beyond expectation. Just as the vase portrays this fire, the human mind can portray a fight. How a five second fist fight at school becomes a stabbing by next period. How a child spilling milk becomes a ten minute time out.

How a cheating spouse becomes a dead one.

Another pedal, it floats down near the table. My breathe catches it last second, drifting it to the carpet. The small becoming the big. The worthless exaggerated. The rose, its stem begins to curl, to burn. The fire runs over the thorns, erasing them forever. Crumbling the painful bits into ash. Any therapist will tell you that the best way to destroy the problem is not to defeat it in one go, but to see a long plan through. Just as the flame catches the stem inch by inch, you have to focus on one problem at a time. Your wife cheats on you so you buy a gun. You kill your wife, and the problem isn’t solved. You shoot the guy she’s cheating on you with first, however, and she begs for forgiveness. This is human nature.

Till death do us part my ass.

I watch as the burning beauty touches the water, and the problem is fixed. But by now the rest of the house is on fire, and the bodies have become the pedals. The bodies are now the ones burning their silhouettes into the ground, waiting on a breeze to blow their ashes away.

And the vase of water with the crumbled black ash flower is the last piece of salvation any of us will get to see.