To Sacrifice

There's a red scarf doing a beautiful impression of a chaotic pirouette on the sidewalk outside of my little cottage. It whips this way and that, as though pulled towards the heavens by an invisible string while also being tethered to the ground by another.
Somehow I relate.

The storm that has been threatening to make an appearance for hours is finally here and I can feel the electricity in the air. Smell the humidity that sits heavy in every molecule. Somehow, the wind picks up even more and the scarf flies off into the trees with a gaggle of dead leaves. Do leaves travel in gaggles like geese? Perhaps it’s a swarm. Or a murder. A murder of leaves. That feels appropriate.

I set my wine glass down and walk far enough to the edge of the porch that I can feel the wet wood under my bare feet where the first few drops of rain have landed.

I pull the heavy blanket that’s wrapped around my shoulders tighter, as though that might protect me from something. Anything. Perhaps myself.
If only.

And then I do the thing that if I were watching a character do in a movie would make me roll my eyes and talk endlessly about how no one actually does that.

I drop the blanket from my shoulders and I step out into the rain, hair whipping around my face like a dark witch in a novel, and I let the cool drops soak through me to my very bones, hoping the water will clear away every last memory that’s haunting me.

And I speak the words I swore I never would.

“Earth below
Sky above
Hear the words my lips now sew
Take thy love
Close thy eyes
Be only things he will despise”

And in the instant the last word slips through my lips, something is torn from my soul. Something I refuse to think about. And a gut wrenching sickness settles into my bones creating a hollowness I’ve never known but will now become quite dependent on. Because I know as long as I feel that emptiness…. Somewhere, somehow, he’s safe.