Nightmare City

I saw him in a place he should never have been, and in a time when I least expected to see him. Sadness poured from his eyes in unseen tears and jerked hard at my spirit. The light from the chapel's stained-glass window cast colorful prisms across his hard features, the green of his eyes still glowing with heat when he locked my gaze. I queried about his well being.

"My son died." Just like that. "He was three months old."

I felt as if someone had punched me in the gut. I felt so responsible because I never wanted him to have a child with her. With anyone. Anyone but me. In the back of my mind, I knew I'd caused it somehow, that the law of attraction had brought down the hand of Doom on this innocent one and smote him because I wanted him gone.

Strangely, though, it was me to whom he turned for comfort. He mourned for days, he and I alone on my bed, no acts but the one of grief being fulfilled. Pure aching was met with as much comfort as I knew how to give. I held him as he cried on my shoulder, weeping with him in anger at myself and sorrow for his excrutiating loss.

When he finally returned home, I checked my bank account soon after to discover that $1200 was spent on a Dell laptop, one I knew I didn't purchase. Intuitively, I knew he'd retreated into himself and commited the lowest of low - he stole my credit card number and did it to make me angry. I went to him.

"Please," I begged him. "I'm not angry with you, but you need to tell me if you stole the money. I will give you anything you ask for, just be honest with me."

"YES!" he exploded. "I stole the money! Don't you get it?" He screamed in my face. "I'm trying to push you away! I'm doing anything I can to make you stop loving me, and yet you only love me more and forgive me more than I should ever be forgiven. Why? Why me?" he implores.

To be honest, I didn't know how to answer him. I just opened my arms and he pulled me into an endless embrace.

"Because," I whisper to him. "My heart needs you."