Married Life?

So this is married life is it? My face is wet with tears I should not be crying. Men do not cry. I cannot contemplate married life without her; she is my wife. She was my wife. I only just married her and now we’re over. She’s gone and I am all alone.

So this is married life is it? Is it all one constant aching pain? At our wedding people wept and so did we. A hundred lonely tears when people are supposed to cry with joy. We cried in pain. What an awful wedding we had. You had a dirty dress; all stained in red and neither of us had the strength to stand on our weary feet. Together we crouched as the vows were sobbed.

So this is married life is it? Where everyday feels like a crushing weight that’s holding me down and stopping me moving forward. Where the blackness of my now heavy heart makes me invisible and detached from all others. I’m being suffocated! I scream and shout but no-one hears. All the guests have left me to my grief. There was no time for a wedding reception, we didn’t even have time to brush away our tears or share a wedding kiss before you were gone.

And if this is married life I wish we had never married at all. I wish we could have married in a different time and place because now all that’s left to ask is,

“Can I kiss your lips while they’re still warm?”

Because they’re chilling with every minute, my love.

“Can I kiss them while they’re still red?”

Because they’re paling with every minute, my love.

And why do I grip your hand so hard it should hurt but you do not grip mine?

You are feeling pain no more as you lie in my arms. You have not moved since we married, but you can move no more. A life taken away from me by unseeing eyes and unfeeling hands from an enemy we never knew. To anyone else you will never be more than a victim of war.

And you will not feel pain any more, so hush my love. I have taken that pain to join with mine and I will never feel again. This agony is a drug and I am comfortably numb.

That red stain is harshly warm as it seeps to me. I can believe that it was what coloured your lips and warmed your porcelain skin. And when the stain first spread across your dress, our vows were taken in an unspoken agreement; I will wait for you. There will never be another. Time will wither me but I will wait.

And now your lips are blue.

And now your skin is cold.

I will float to heaven too someday, my love.

And we will marry the way we should have.

Hush, my love.

Sleep for now, your pain relenting, no tourniquet to staunch your blood.

I will return to you and we will marry someday, my love.

We will marry the day that you are not slipping through my fingers.