August came and went, but she’ll always remember August, because of what he said:
Give me a kiss and I’ll give you a smile.
Tell me something sweet, and I’ll buy you something nice.
You cover your face like the moon behind a shimmer of clouds.
Tell me you love me, and I’ll see you come around.
Darling, didn’t you know that I’ll pick two stars and put them in your eyes.
If only you’ll be a little less stubborn and learn to offer up a smile.
Three months passed, and it was turning out to be the greatest love story ever told.
They promised each other with the stink of sex between them:
Let’s both hold hands and write this story — our story — together.
Months went past but even as her stomach grew and she grew beautiful still, the theatre of life dimmed.
That’s when she opened her mouth, and an angel with a terrible secret whispered out aloud:
Do you know this little secret I’m about to drop softly into your ear, my love?
Street lights wept as she told him of early dementia. The days passed by, and he saw how thoughts, questions, and sanity itself fell away in her mind.
The only thought that remained in that fine sieve of her brain was a terrifying question:
Who am I?
He thought:
Relationships end because one person loves the other person a little less.
And he slipped a knife through with just a hint of a secret gasp, and she felt the skin, flesh and sinew parting with sympathetic and painful reluctance.
She thought with a last painful breath as the darkness came:
As you can see, even monsters were babies once.
When the world came to see her rest, she heard his Mama admonish him:
What are you doing?
He said with a surprised jolt:
Nothing Ma.
But she saw him as did the red-breasted robin nearby, spitting with glee, spitting with relief, right where she lay, right here among the leaves.
