Absolution

Was organizing my documents at the office today, and found this collecting cobwebs in one of the folders months after Given Grace's death:

You will fall in love. Almost inevitably, as the heat of summer gives way to monsoon. He will not be tall, dark and handsome, like you were made to believe. But you will love him anyway – he who you shall never meet.

You will bleed, and be happy you did. A stain of pride in white sheets on your wedding night. You will bleed – that, which in a parallel universe, that which is true, you never did out of love.

You will cry, almost indefinitely. Moved by the bundle of flesh from your own blood and tissue, pale and burgundy, on your arms. You will call her Grace, too – she, who you shall never bear.

In the confines of these pages, torn and taped together in anger and regret, is your life – that which you shall never wake up to live as you lie in a dream under dirt and soil thrown at you after a bullet through the back.

for Given Grace.