The Widow

CHAPTER 22

I don’t want to think about death tonight.

I want to think about love.

I don’t want to think about violence.

Again. Love.

I don’t want to hear Abigail’s voice.

Love.

My heart bursts with a love so deep and pure and fulfilling that it alone is all I need to sustain me.

So few ever have this kind of love in their lives.

I don’t pity them so much as I stand apart from them.

Separate.

Alone.

Isolated.

All those words come to mind and yet don’t describe how I feel, because they imply loneliness and desperation. Incompleteness. But I am not lonely or desperate or incomplete.

Because of my love.

I love.

It’s not just a state of being but of action.

Love as a verb.

I’ve lied. I’ve misled. I’ve cried. I’ve killed.

Ways of loving. All of them.

I feel so free, writing in this stream of consciousness manner. Allowing myself to put aside all my inhibitions.

I don’t want to kill again but to say I won’t is to say my ability to love has weakened.

And it hasn’t.

It won’t.

Not ever.