A Tribute to Despair on Valentine's Eve

Dear Diary,

Today I killed her. Or as good as. Today I took a life that belonged to God... or I would have believed it belonged to God if God had deigned to show up at all tonight... The scratchy hempen rope, the swinging legs... Oh, for you to have seen her swinging legs! The eyes that stared back at me, her empty eyes, spoke of the sadness she had felt all her life. The rose; surely a testament from someone who had loved her, drooped and dying alone in its glass vase. Just like she did. She droops and she swings and she dies alone in this room full of glass... but the glass is different... the glass reflects her face and bears its sour message back to her. 'You'll die alone. You'll swing alone.'

As she hangs there, I notice that her left shoe is slipping from her foot. I would fix it so that all was perfect but she is out of reach now, and getting farther all the time.

I remember watching her from the other side of the glass. I waited here in silence, hands pressed longingly against the glass. My breath never clouded it, my breath is always cold. I watched as fat, salty tears scudded down her cheeks and ruined the makeup that she so meticulously painted upon her face. I watched as she climbed the staircase. I watched as she tied the ropes. I smiled as she jumped.

As her pendulous body comes to rest, I suddenly feel lonely again. But there will be others... there are always others. This is Valentine's Eve, and a cacophony of voices rise from the other side of mirrors from every room of every house, everywhere.

And besides, she was a telemarketer. You wouldn't have liked her anyway.