Red

I checked the mailbox for evidence of the red stove, but it was not in there. Then I started thinking about what might have become of it. Had I unknowingly discarded it, being used mostly to junk mail? Was there a thief in the postal service? I started reading a third book simultaneously when I got back inside the house. This one is fiction. I haven't spoken to anyone, or been spoken to by anyone, in three days now so, when I'm reading, I can really hear the characters' voices. So far there are three. One I know from the radio. One is from memory. And the last is spontaneous. I started remembering things while reading, like a television being on in the background. She was crying silently with the covers pulled all the way up under her chin. And she was staring at me in a meaningful way that I could not yet comprehend. Hurt maybe, terribly injured, like I'd failed to understand something critical. Like I'd forgotten our Golden Aniversary. I drew the covers down slowly in order to get closer to her. She didn't protest. Her pain glared angry and red and horrbile in the form of hundreds of scratches inflicted with something pointed or edged all the way from her throat down to her feet. I was not prepared for that - sickened, useless, wounded, angry. Always angry then. Anger covered for everything. This time angry because it was the body of my love defiled. My body. My love. I understood in a dizzy sickness that we were both doomed. We had the same sentence. But now, look at all the years that have come and gone! See? We're fine. Outside my window I perceive two crimson smudges on a branch. Cardinals, vaguely, without my glasses.