A Dark Tale - If I’d Loved You More

IF I’d loved you more, I would have killed you. 

“She means nothing to me, baby.” You lined up culprits — the drink in your hand, the sag of her low-cut top, the loud music, the headlights of her gaze, hoping I would take my aim. “Just a stupid mistake, baby.” Pacing the room, you lost your shape in front of me, your outline melting against the white walls, oblivious to how your excuses curled my toes. 

*

I’D found you eagle-spread on the bed, hard from the restless energy of dreams. X marked the spot. I had washed up the knives at the sink when your breath fell on my neck. “Missed you, baby.” You smelled of lies and cheap tequila. The sponge glided down the blades, their sharpness running along my fingers while your hands glided down my hips. My love for you curdled like the blood which leaked between my legs — an inconvenience I had to learn to live with.

*

LOVED. Past tense of a present imperfect. “Do you forgive me, baby?” We fed our relationship with small acts of violence. October lashed at our door, the knots of your fingers pulled at my hair, the blades of my nails raking blood down the expanse of your back. Outside waves split themselves onto rocks. We coloured each other in red, blue and purples like a battered evening sky. Since her our love has disappeared into a chalk outline drawn on our bedroom floor. No matter how many time we fucked, your sweat on my skin, we were always a body’s width apart.

*

YOU kneeled, worshiped at the altar of my hips. Mistook my silence for absolution. Outside the light was dying under the night’s boot. “Do you still love me, baby?” Through winter my anger had demanded retribution. I would, but first you needed to get the trash out. You dragged the filth out in a bulging black bag, but the smell still lingered in the house. Ghosts of rotting sins, chicken carcasses and infidelity rising from under the bed. 

*

MORE often than not I imagine another between my legs, a different pelvis pressed against my buttocks. “Do you feel this, baby?” you say. I do. Feel the void between our spines, the  star pulsing in the sky, their light drowning in the ocean. From the window I watch the waves curls, imagine her hair sway like seaweeds under the shimmering surface, I feel the weight of the pebbles, her pockets pregnant with them. 

If I’d loved you more, it would have been you down there, instead of her.