Blue Carpet

He was breaking up with her. Right now. In the middle of their wedding day, with spindles of white raining down around them, as he clutched her hand in an almost too dry-hot way. The ring was already on her finger, a dense chilly metal clenching down on the fat that encompassed her ring finger, and she was holding the one she was going to put on his.

Supposed to put on his.

But as his hand shook, pawing at her in an almost desperate way, she didn’t think the gold band would make it on to his fingers. She didn’t understand, white noise filling her ears in a way that singled out her vision, focusing solely on him. His eyes were wide and shaky, but they peered down at her. He was sweating at the collar, his chest was contracting with an uneven pant of despair, and his feet were pointed away from her as if his body was trying to make an escape but his mind couldn’t.

Four years together, they had spent and crafted a life from the ground. He had proposed, finally, on the roof of the home they shared together. Two dogs, a pregnancy scare, and the planning of marriage later and he was standing at the altar saying he couldn’t marry her.

Her dress was too constricting at the moment, the thin net stretched across her bosoms clamping own on her lungs, and she needed to get away before her mother realized her fiancé was leaving her at the altar. Her mother had been thrilled she was going to be married, the terminal illness she had been diagnosed with meaning somebody would be there for her precious child when she couldn’t. Now she would watch her daughter stare down at an empty blue carpet in front of her, alone and heartbroken.

The panic set in after a couple of seconds of mind-numbing seconds. The priest had stopped, and the crowd looked upon them with a breathless gaze. The realization had set in – the marriage would not proceed. She was frozen, almost as if watching the car collide into at an alarming speed. She would end up paralyzed, and there was nothing she would be able to do to stop this.

She wanted to stop him, to press marks into the delicate skin around his wrist, shake him to tell him to stay. If she could, she would get on her knees and beg for him to love her.

But she loved him too much, and so finally, he turned his back to her, the crisp black wedding suit filtering away as she watched him walk down the aisle she had seconds walked up. It was a dream to her, to walk down the aisle with the man she loved, but in the end, she ended up alone.