I met her beneath a sky swollen with thunderclouds, her dress clinging like fog to the curve of her form. She smiled at me as though she'd known me in some distant life perhaps she had. Our laughter echoed down alleys slick with rain, our fingers laced like vines, tightening, tightening.

She smelled of old roses and something fainter… iron, perhaps.

I loved her. Oh, how I loved her. With a fever, with a sickness, with a gnawing thing in my belly that would not be sated by kisses or poetry or the warmth of her breath on my collarbone.

And when she said the word “space” my world narrowed to the pulse in my temple.

Space?

How could there be space between what was already one?

The blade, I assure you was not my first choice. It was simply the most honest.

Now she sleeps forever in the floorboards, still smiling, still mine.

And at night, when I press my ear to the blood-soaked wood, I hear her whisper back.

She forgives me.

She must.

After all… I loved her.