A Place I Never Want to Go Back to

My wife and I had a house and it had and still has a very special place in my heart. I had lived with my love for many years, together since we were oh so very young. The house was white with black trimming, but most of the paint was chipped away on the back porch. Our house always seemed to have something about it that set it apart from all the rest. As you walk into the front door of the house you notice a long, slender stairway that led up into the main hallway of the house. The strong smell of cigarette smoke is quite evident when you reach this point. Yes, my sweetheart did smoke.

My beloved had a very softhearted voice that I remember sung me to sleep when I was restless from work. She would wait next to me, cuddled so very close until we fell deep asleep and in the morning she would wake me with the smell of hot freshly cooked breakfast on the table. I remember the burgeoning green of our back-garden meadow in May, was gloriously lush, radiant really. I can’t begin to search for enough descriptive words to distinguish the greens I saw; emerald and viridian; olive, pea and lime. I always became giddy surrounded by robust greenery. Indeed, it was a green felicity, and the trials and melancholies of winter disappeared with the exhilaration I felt watching emerging blades, vines, and shoots sprout from the soft, life filled soil. As the meadow’s growth flourished, I always kept track of the succession of plants. Golden coins of flowering dandelions carpeted the new grass for a week before fluffing into white globes of seed-carrying filaments. The grasses grew taller. Buttercups and blue flag iris colored the meadow with gold and purple, and daisies added their white blooms. My sweetheart was the kind, gentle, loving, caring love every man dreams about having. However, the next faithful day, the stuff of hellish nightmares sprouted into life…

The sunset was not spectacular that day. The vivid ruby and tangerine streaks that so often caressed the blue brow