The Face

Why did the events leading up to this moment, this shattered moment of my ultimate vulnerability, occur? I can’t for the life of me see any logic in any of it.  She’s gone…Gone, consumed, depleted, encumbered…no more.  I don’t think that I have ever had a feeling that was more intoxicating, more cataclysmic, more emotionally draining; than to see her, lying on the floor; no breath, no movement, no beat of her now immobile heart.  I don’t think anyone has ever deserved an eternal sentence of torturous misery, of entrenched regret, of unimaginable throb and sting; than I.  The worst agony of all is seeing her face glowing within my memory, that smiling and jubilant expression that echoed all of her strength throughout the muscles and bones of any that encountered her.  That face is the one that kills me, because I took it away, and replaced it with the hollow shell that some used to call my heart.