On the Edge of Our Lives

I step through this door and find myself standing on the edge of our lives. I do not know which way to go from here. For too long now, all my steps have been taken alongside hers, and now I find myself standing alone in this house we shared for so long.

The last steps I took from here were alongside her stretcher as they hurried her to the ambulance, and now I walk back alone. I look down and find I’m still clutching her balled up cardigan in my hand. Now, though, it is stiff with her dried blood. I go to put it down on the hall table as I shuffle past it, hearing her voice sharp in my ear warning me not to put it there. We shared this house for so long, but they were always her rules we lived by, her rules for living and a place for everything. Dirty washing should go in the laundry basket. I ought to know that by now.

Then I stop, and realise, that her rules no longer apply, that I will no longer have to live by her rules. My feeling of freedom is short-lived though when I allow myself to realise that only too soon I will be living by someone else’s rules yet again, when the police come to take me away for what I did to her when I just couldn’t take any more of her rules.