Autumn's 10 Word Challenge
She ran her finger over the crack in the white porcelain basin, imagining blood running over red rocks. It was hot that summer. I remember that more than anything. It was hot.
We'd eloped to The Grand Canyon. She used to sing that song, "there is no Arizona," and I wanted to prove that that wasn't me. I wouldn't neglect her like that. Whatever she'd come to expect, I'd keep our tryst. I needed her to know that.
Maybe now she wished I'd left her. I didn't know. I just watched her running her fingers over that crack and somehow my eyes kept turning the porcelain into her skin, only all the blood had dried up. It was all I could do not to scream. I wouldn't let one broken basin be her legacy; I owed her more than that.
She looked up and locked eyes with me, and she was there, in that blue sky, spinning pirouettes towards the ocean. I remembered the frenzy of packing and unpacking, the shorts and summer dresses that all but blew away through the open windows, scattering their patterns of poppies over the hills and down from the small crater of her belly button along the path that lead to the sea. I knelt down there, in her eyes, and wept, each tear begging for absolution. She smiled and the crack closed under her fingers. She was standing there, ten steps away across the dusty wooden floor, frozen, as if in a diorama, and I felt I was the cracked basin. I looked up again to her eyes and realized that she'd healed me. I watched her slowly unfolding strong white wings.