Critiques welcome. This isn't my normal sort of writing, but the idea hit and wouldn't leave me alone.
It's been twenty years since I lost her. Twenty years since I drove her out of the house with my jealousy and my drinking. Twenty years since I said those horrid things to her. Twenty years since I broke her heart.
I remember that night like it was yesterday. She came home from work late. I took one look at her, standing there as beautiful as one of heaven's angels, and all the suspicions came roaring out of me in one extended tirade. It wasn't even that she had given me cause to be suspicious. It was just my foolish insecurity. After all, what could someone like her see in a lumbering old fool like me?
My friends, when I still had some, told me to move on. My family told me to try and forget her. As if I could forget what it was like to have heaven in my arms. As if I could move past the night I lost the only truly good thing to ever happen to me.
Even now, two decades later, I remember her as clearly as if she was standing right there beside me. I remember her hair, as soft as silk and such a perfect shade of red. I remember her eyes, green as sparkling emeralds, and the way they twinkled when she laughed. Everything about her, from her skin as white as moonlight to her laughter, infectious and constant, is indelibly engraved in my memory.
Me? I'm nothing special. Just a dumb jock. I took one too many blows to the head while I was boxing in school, and now I can't hold down a job doing much of anything. But she loved me. With my neanderthal looks and my idiotic attempts at romance.
I'll never forget that night. I know, because I tried. I retreated into the bottle. I chased drugs. I even rented companionship by the hour. Nothing worked. The drunker I got, the more clearly I remembered. When I passed out, stoned out of my mind, the foul things I said to her that night rang in my ears, taunting me with my foolishness. The rented companionship? I couldn't perform because every touch, every kiss, every caress reminded me of what I'd thrown away.
I've tried to apologize to her. Even though I know I can never have her back, even though I know there's no resetting the dial, I want her to understand that I get it. That I know I'm the one at fault, the one that ruined everything. She just looks at me with those dead eyes, no longer lit with love, and I know it's a wasted effort.
Tonight would have been our anniversary. Instead I stand here alone, underneath the tree where we met. No, not alone. I have my memories.
The memories flood me now as the tears pour from my eyes. Memories of that night. Of the things I said to her. Of the love in her eyes shattered and replaced with tears. She stormed past me twice- once to pack her bags and the next to throw them in the car.
The next memories are of screaming tires, twisted metal, and a shattered body. I lost her that night twice. Both were my fault. Because she didn't see the car coming down the road, and she backed right into it. She died immediately.
I lay myself down under the tree where we met, and where she is now buried. I pull the trigger and feel my life begin to fade. As death takes me, I take one last look around.
Under the tree, she waits for me. The smile on her face, the look in her eyes, are what I prayed I would find. She has accepted my apology, written in my life's blood. Her face says we will now be together forever.