I sit in perfect, selfish solitude amid the wreckage of Robert's garden. In dappled light I view shorn heirloom roses, trampled Russian sage, massacred lavender.
Mother of God, I can’t believe the carnage.
Only the birch escaped the slaughter and now tosses in the wind that passes through the sycamore that shades me from the morning sun.
Robert retired last night at ten. I don’t know when he crept out here and murdered all his flowers.
He must have hung himself soon after.
I sit in perfect, selfish solitude, dreaming of a lap pool, where once was only garden.
Copyright 2009
Author's Bio: Judith Kelly Quaempts lives and writes in rural eastern Oregon. A member of the Internet Writers Workshop, her work has appeared in Camroc Press Review, Drunk and Lonely Men, and T-Zero.
