Oil and Roses

Oil and Roses

Sienna finished up the last bit of dishes that needed to be loaded in the dishwasher. She looked around the lavish kitchen big enough for a large family and sighed with heavy discontent. As she dried her long fingers with the dish towel, her eyes landed on the wedding ring set that was upwards of 7 grand on her finger and wondered why she even still wore it. She looked across the expansive family room and watched the last of the birds in the garden visit the nectar plants and berry trees while the cardinals ate sunflower seeds from a solitary feeder as the sun kissed the horizon in a slow descent.

Sienna went to her home office at the end of the long hall and tried to get some work done for her business, but her fingers hovered uselessly over the keyboard. She was preoccupied with the illicit thoughts of someone else. It had been a while since she made the trip over. She winced at the lie that she had once uttered when in total desperation pleaded with the universe asking to give her the strength to never look back and to never go back to him. Her life had quickly gone from misery to love and success and then marital problems followed by the unexpected death of her husband. They had stopped being intimate the last couple of years before colon cancer took him. Luckily, they had never had children together, but they had children from previous relationships that never quite meshed together as Sienna hoped.

The sex was never really any good. It was completely unsatisfying, and she accepted it as part of the deal that the universe bestowed upon her. She sometimes wondered if she was being punished for having all that fantastic pre-marital sex. Maybe it was because she had started thinking about him once more, almost daily. In the latter years of her marriage she could only tolerate being hugged by her husband and this was well before finding out about the cancer. His addiction to porn soured even the relatively tolerable sex in the beginning of the marriage.

She was bitter because she had asked him numerous times to dial back the porn and almost as many times to get checked since his father and her father had both fallen to the same death. Sienna got checked using an in-home method and was fine. But like most things, he never seemed to appreciate the intelligence or the wisdom that came with the words she spoke. She had loved him fiercely in the beginning and could honestly say that she could not see a life without him. She could barely get the words out, the meaning, the feeling, was so intense and then slowly over time and years, the feeling utterly disappeared and she dreamt of the day she would be free, alone on a nice piece of land surrounded by woods and within a short walking distance to a lake with wildlife and birds and beautiful, seclusion and solitary happiness. Or not far from a beach.

Sienna pushed away from her desk and went to take a shower and get dressed. No sense sitting around uselessly. She had options. OK, full disclosure. She had an option, the only option she knew she needed. On a trip to the other side of town while looking at a display case of a heart with a tree of life in it she had asked her husband for, she heard her name called. She turned and a myriad of emotions ran through her mind as she stared stoically at the lips that uttered her name.

After dressing simply, with purpose, Sienna took a long look at the pewter urn that held the remains of her husband. She touched the wedding ring he was wearing that fateful day. She left her high-end home, drove through the gates of the community, and headed for the ghetto.

A lot older and not much wiser.

Shut up brain!

©Venis Nytes

Song Inspiration

Leave your Lover – Echos

I Don’t Even Care - Missio

If You Want Love – NF

Broken – Lund

WDWGILY – SYML

Movement - Hozier

Habit - Gabrielle Shonk

Boom – X Ambassadors

Won’t Go Down Easy – Jaxson Gamble

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