Undeserving

Under the fluorescent bulbs
Her eyes changed
From a crystalline blue to a soft gray.
Remarkably like the withering of a flower,
His flower.
Tears rose in dramatic floods
Through the crusted blood.
The smell of wine still lingered on her lips.
He thought to kiss her,
But yielded because of the pain it might cause her.
She was delicate again like a child.

What a bitter recollection it was for him
Battling silently over the past hours.
His mind told him to discard the illusions it received.
That he would wake in the morning
With her warm body entwined with his,
Like the grape vines to an antique veranda.
Instead her warmth faded gently
As the ivory clock on the wall ticked.

She had simply asked him to stay with her.
Such a trivial, last request
It meant the world to her.
At first, he cursed God, all mankind, and himself
For the breath issuing from his lungs so effortlessly
While she had to gasp for it.

The innocence in her eyes
Down played her memories,
The tears they had shed countless times.
One will never know
The importance of a "hello", a handshake, even a quarrel,
Until they experience the permanent absence of these gestures with a loved one.

His eyes began to well again
But he concealed it perfectly
With a smile he gave her,
As she whispered, ' I love you. I forgive you...'

"Don't!" He replied with irrepressible guilt.
He looked away from her from a moment,
At a lone painting on the wall.
It was a mundane sunrise but infinitely perfected.
The swirls of color looked as if it was a work of God,
But the lines were so fragile, so definite.
Just as Claudia might have looked to him now.
Claudia who would never see one goddamn sunrise again thanks to me!
And I am defying sight and the odds by resting my eyes on my lost beauty.
Her absence might as well be mine.