The End

By: RDV


He could say he hated her each minute till the day he died, but he wouldn’t run out of hatred.
He hated her when she was near, loved her with passion when she was far.
If the marriage could fit in an easel, it would be one clump of burning
Books, full of stories, wild and tragic.
That marriage was nothing but a fragile structure;
One pull from the bottom and the whole thing collapsed.
He had thought of restarting the relationship from nothing, all over again,
Or from the middle, or even at the end;
In thinking so he realized that nothing
Would have made a difference unless
They were changed for some couple else.
A misdeed, their parents called the marriage; a crime, they later labeled it,
A toil that brings no reward, a war one could not get out of unscathed.
He said her name as though it was something he could never pronounce
Without looking like he was chewing on poison;
She said his name as though it was something bitter
She wanted to spit out of her mouth.
Disgust.
Disdain,
Are those what men get for marrying women
Just because they are well-endowed? He wondered.
He wondered at the oddness of forgiveness, acceptance,
When, as a young man, he was untouchable, cold, and unapproachable.
But in her presence the ice king veil fell down on his feet
To reveal the lover, to let her life take shape inside of him.
The seed of doubt was sown not long after,
Whereupon she went home,
Stinking of some other man’s scent.
His silent jealousy later resurfaced in a hideous form;
It hurt her, it threw her all over the place, bruised her
Until both were tired of the shrieks
And the sweat and blood the rumble required.
She cried, enduring cruelty, a weakness he sometimes envied.
He didn’t cry, because there was too much hate;
The hatred that preoccupied him even in his sleep,
The hatred that drove him mad with love
And passion for her,
The hate that lingered in the last of his dark days
When she left him, not for his deeds,
But for another man.
In the loudness of the drone that was her absence,
A clarity came to him; that hate was natural, elemental,
A thread that pulled them in the same direction.
Now, with her gone, he was grand in his success as a cuckold.