I Must Have Been Very, Very Bad - Kaye Doiron

He is a walking contradiction. Beautiful to feast the eyes upon with a smile that lights the darkest hour. His path has been paved with failures and successes of the worst kind. She remembers the fly. Hours spent rescuing a small fly that had fallen into the honey for his tea. He talked in a soothing seductive voice to the small fly that he called his beauty as he slowly wiped the honey off her little wings and her little body. At first the fly struggled to fly away as her wings were heavily burdened with the sweet sticky substance that attracted her. Then she just gave up and sat rooted to his palm as he worked her free. From where she sat the sunlight hit the glass of water... just so... that the fly was magnified and it’s true, she was beautiful. She had never noticed how beautiful flies are up close. When she was clean she flew but not far and slowly she returned to his hand and climbed up and down the beautiful strong fingers. The same fingers that went through the plaster on the wall last night, the same ones that wrapped around her throat and called her a whore because she was alone in the house with the carpenter.


The fly flew away too, just as she knows she must.


He sits quietly today, the morning sun still reflecting off the glass the same way it did that day with the fly, except today it is catching the depth of his eyes. His tea is slightly to his left, his arms are crossed, his brow is bent. The smoke traveling up from his unsmoked cigarette dances in the light and it is easy for her to distract herself in it’s dance. Her eyes move across his face, the scar that travels down the the middle of his forehead and through his eye, the broken lip slightly askew on the left side, the brown curls that toss across his forehead and give him the careless young boy look when he is in a playful mood. She can still feel the anger boiling under his skin. He is no longer her love. The dragon is awake and she can not tame it with love, nor kisses, nor reassuring words, she can not heal the wounds in him, she can’t reach him. She knows she has to give him up. In a few hours he will return shameful and sweet, self aware and claim that he can change, that their love can save him. She can not allow this to happen. She has to give him up.


“ Can I do anything for you?” she hesitantly asks. “Leave.” he says so quietly she has to strain to hear. “ I’m a monster. You deserve better.” She wants to take him in her arms and forgive him. She knows she shouldn’t. He has killed and it will take days for him to recover. He needs to be out in the field where his dragon can be unleashed instead of playing house with her. She knows he is trying. She knows he loves her. He is ill. Killing will make you sick like that. She knows that it will kill everything good in him if she leaves. She also knows that just as he recovers, he will be called out to task again and it will start all over. She has to leave. She has to move on. It will be the hardest thing she has ever done, but it is proof that she loves herself and him, she can not bear to see him suffer any longer. Whatever she did to deserve this, to have to walk away from a love as strong as theirs, it must have been bad. It must have been very very bad.