Bed of Thorns

“Shush, we have to treat her delicately.”

“This is a difficult time.”

“Has anyone told her?”

“Who drove her here?”

Maria walked into the sweet-smelling room. She detected fresh roses, and she knew they were red because that’s what Ralph said he wanted. She imagined his long, blonde hair, honey-thick, stud arms, and his impeccable taste in clothing. And cologne.

Recalling the first time they met, she saw him as truly made in the image of God. His face held a warm, golden haze. His eyes radiated like sapphires free from the ground’s prison. For Maria, perfection had no other face.

“Are you taking philosophy 101?” she recalled him asking.

“Yes, and we’re going to be late.”

It was better than never.

Sure, they’d been kids back then starting out in college. They had dreams they would fly, and both fell back to the earth with humble contentment, content because they had each other in innocence, in paradise.

No one could break such tight bonds. Life gives us seasons, and we give life reasons, but human love, love lasted forever in the kisses of souls, in the rewarding breath of a close lover, embraced together and melting in a simmering pot of warmth.

Miracles are miracles because they are divinity’s way of communicating the vast, the undefinable by human utterances, the cosmic at large to a species so simple, childlike in the cradle of the universe full of stars and heavens.

“Where’s Ralph?” Maria asked aloud, just getting used to being blind. She moved her walking stick as she had been directed, still clumsy, running into the hard barriers in her new reality. She would go to physical therapy and learn more. In the meantime, the prosthetic served as a reminder to everyone that she was blind.

“Um, oh I forgot that you lost your sight in the accident. He’s up there, just walk in the aisles, avoid the roses. They have such nasty thorns. And so many of them.”

The doctors had let her out for her wedding day. She didn’t pay attention to much of what they said. The happiest day of her life was upon her. She’d dressed in her gown. Her mother protested a bit, sighed, and walked away.

“Ralph?” She questioned.

A few people whispered to each other.

“How does she not know. Didn’t they tell her?”

“Tell me what?” Maria asked, her voice uncertain.

“Where do you think you are, Maria?”

“I’m at the chapel, of course.” She moved forward until she hit an obstacle, cold and unwelcoming.

A woman came up beside her and grabbed Maria’s hand, rubbing her palms gently after the quick action. She directed it into the perceived fountain below.

She recognized the texture.

“It’s like his hand is frozen,” Maria said back, cautiously.

“Maria, he’s…”

“What?”

“Dead.”

Maria let go of her walking stick, and she fell into a coffin of roses. They bit and scrapped her, and she felt the blood drip out of her body. Unseen voices called out to her and heavy limbs picked her up, carrying her out of the funeral home. She knew without words what had happened.

And she slept on a bed of thorns.