I should have just turned it off, pushed another button, any button, just to keep the memory of you from crawling all over my skin. Instead, I had to stop, pull off the road, and sit weeping, letting your voice pour over me, encompassing me, feeding the ache that's been eating my flesh since the day I last saw you.
Memories flash in black and white, and I see that image of you, wrapped in clear plastic, your hair matted by the blood that dried three days ago. I had to get rid of you, with your incessant chatter, and the smell of cigarettes coming off your breath.
I buried your mother too, long ago, long before you picked up the silly prattle and nagging whine where she left off. You thought she simply abandoned you, and she did, but not by choice.
It was my choice, and I had to do it, if only for a litte peace and quiet. Oh how I hated the way she looked at me, raising that self-rightous eyebrow behind her horn rimmed glasses, then blowing that self centered puff of smoke from those too-red lips. "Whore" I imagined those lips mouthing, self condemnation without sound. She breathed her guilt like she blew that smoke, and that guilt was eating us up.
Today I wrapped your body and carried it under the shroud of darkness and laid your body in the trunk of the Caddy. You would have been so proud of me, the way I wiped your hair from your eyes, then tenderly, oh how tenderly I deposited your body in the carefully dug ditch alongside the road in the middle of nowhere. I loved you once, and now, even in your death, I love you still.
'Til death do us part.
