The Union

I knelt on the cobblestone path and faced the flower of my life. The protests of my knee were muffled by the soft brustle of spring and the beating of my heart. As I recited my thousand-rehearsed vows, her dress fluttered into my mind. With its whiteness in every corner of my mind, Byron’s words, shamelessly stolen, were erased away as I repeated. “I’m sorry, I love you.” Her shadow loomed over me as I stared at the cracks of the stones beneath me, with an uncontrollable desire to crawl into their cold depths. The shadow did not move as it commanded me to rise.

There she was, with the sun in her dress. Every shade of red in the folds drove me towards madness as I stared at her face. Behind her dark eyes, the same beast of desire glared with an insatiable hunger that I was too familiar with. They listened to no threats of hanging nor the scorns of the world that will never let our dreams become a reality. Her soft hands pushed me into the tall grass as it welcomed us into its warm refuge. Oh god, how wrong I was. It was not the dress that encased the red sun. Its pale complexion drifted onto the ground as her rays blinded my awed gaze. The last strands of sanity were quickly burnt as our union spread her warmth through every inch of my flesh.

The bell tolled us awake from the stupor as the wind grew colder by the second. We weren’t supposed to stay here for this long. The suitcases stood neatly stacked on the pavement as whistles echoed through the dark meadow. They noticed their flower has been stolen. The driver had long gone when they arrived at the crossroads. With the howls getting closer, I spotted a light coming towards us as the last train of the night slowed to a halt. In a flash, we were in a compartment and shut the door. It was only when the whistles faded away that we shared tears of relief.

The greens disappeared from the world as the light returned outside the window. Gray buildings stacked on top of one another filled the equally gray horizon. In fact, the divide between the two homologous domains was the blackened roofs riddled with the excrements of the countless chimneys. The great engine sighed as the smoke clouded our sights amongst the sea of black masses. Our bodies were tightly knit midst the waves as I noticed blotches of red on her previously untainted grabs. In shock, I lept away and realized that the spreading stopped. Of course, they would know where we would stop. Her cries were drowned by the rumbling of the mass, which began to circle around us. The cold bodies did not part to embrace us, nor did they hide us from the fate we tried to escape from. With my last breath, I continued to whisper, “I love you. I’m sorry.”