Requiemme

         I stood over her grave, looking at the words on the stone. She had been only twenty eight, far too young, far too beautiful. It still scarcely registered in my mind that this was the woman that I was in love with. Our relationship hadn’t lasted that long but…
         Her stone was granite, a good strong stone. I knew that the stone would likely outlive me, the thought made me smile; at least her memory would be around for a long time. I put my hand on the stone, feeling the rough crystals beneath my touch.
         Very rough, unlike her, but so much like her last days, so much pain, poor girl, poor girl…
She had been blonde; maybe even a platinum blonde, although I’m no longer sure. Why can’t I remember how blonde she was?
         I remembered teasing her lightly about being blonde, it was just a joke, in all truth I have dark hair and am far more scatter brained than she ever was.
         I realized I was smiling as I looked at her stone, and I blinked to keep back the tears.
We had had so much fun. She made me smile, she made me feel good, just to be near her, she didn’t have to speak, I didn’t have to speak, just holding her hand, or her leaning on my shoulder, that’s all I needed.
         She told me about her family, her brother, she loved her brother, but he had died just months before she had.
         I don’t know what he died from, not the same as hers, hers was a female disease, female problems…
         I can’t stop the tears as I think about how I would have taken her pain, how I would have taken her troubles as my own if it had been possible, take away the pain she suffered before the end.
         A wind snuck up on me and made me shiver, so I pulled my coat tighter around me and wiped the tear off my cheek.
         There was a bad time, before she went, she was so sick, she had to go to the hospital, but I couldn’t talk to her, it wasn’t working, we had no time and she hurt so much. My tears did not help and only my other friends kept me controlled that night.
         She was so small; her friend had said that she likely weighed only half as much as I did in her last days.
         I noticed, vaguely, that the grass was beginning to get a bit shaggy around the stone; someone would need to trim it soon.
         I thought about leaving the grasses grow, letting it go wild, like she had been.
         She was so much more alive than I was when we met. I was the quiet one, the one that kept to the outside and looked in. She pulled me in, she became my lifeline. She showed me that I didn’t have to be so silent, that I had a reason to live.
         She was so beautiful, the cute little blonde, so full of life. I can’t help but smile when I think of her. Even when she was in her worst pain she would still be lighthearted and make me smile.
         I hope I made her smile, even if I made her smile twice as much as she made me smile, it was not enough to repay her.
         Dark times are indeed upon us when one such as her leaves this earth to whatever fate waited for her.
         Only one fate could have waited for her after death…
         The word makes me cringe, I don’t believe she died; she still lives on, in my memory if in nothing else.
         Maybe now I can repay her, I can make her immortal as God himself could not. God greedily took her away; I can make her live forever in these words.
         I can at least do something for her. She gave me a reason to live, so now I shall give her immortality.
         Poor girl…
         Alice Cooper says that “only women bleed” but why did she need to bleed so much? If something craves blood take mine, I can spare some, why take hers? The scraping pain that I cannot comprehend…
         How did it happen? Why did she have those scars? Why was her life so hard? What did she do to deserve such a fate?
         Am I somehow better than her for having lived? For having bawled at my own tiny worries while she smiled as her life hung daringly at the cliff’s edge?
         I can no longer see her stone; it’s just a blur, as everything is. The whole cemetery now is lost in a fog of tears as I fall to the ground.
She was so beautiful.
         Her eyes, so much like the sky, cliché or not it was true. Like the summer sky maybe twenty degrees away from the sun.
         Flaxen haired, another cliché! But once again all too true, not anything as horrid as platinum, but like the light flax that my family would burn each fall until angel’s hair fell from the skies.
         I wonder what she would have thought of the flax burning. Would she have liked the great glowing piles in the night? Or would she have thought it was a great waste?
         I look at her stone again.
         Her name still stands there as it will for many years to come.
         I too will continue on, hoping that she might see me, hoping that she will watch me and give me some of her strength when I need it.
         I will always keep her memory, even after my own might be gone. I will think of her, and how she was strong, even when she was weak, and how she always cared, even when she was dying.
         I stand up; dusting myself off, not looking away from the stone until I could stand up straight, confident that no dirt clung to my pants.
         Then I looked down the road, it stretched for miles, a long road full of twists, it had taken a large twist to get here, but more may be on the way.
         I leaned down and kissed her stone softly, as if the cold, hard stone was as soft as her lips.
         Whispering a final “goodbye” I began walking away.
         She would not have wanted me to linger too long, just to never forget her.