Unforgivable Sin

I lift up my head and for a fraction of a moment I catch a glimpse of his face, awash with unspeakable pain. I blink and look again, and he is back to his usual gentle, kind yet unreadable self. I wonder if the painful expression was real or I just imagined it, projecting my own pain on him.

Of the two of us, I seem to be the one most surprised with the outburst. I had assumed that shoveling manure once for all eliminated the feistiness I had been carrying around with me from the day I was born. A thought crosses my mind that there could be an entire mountain inside my heart, and what I dealt with while shoveling the driveway was just the beginning, just a tiny tip of the iceberg of crud within. Irrepressible queasiness starts building up in my stomach. I don't want to add the vomit to the character assassination, so I stand up, my feet sinking deeper in the dirt. The Webster inside my head contains no words which adequately express the apology this situation demands. I'm sorry, seems woefully insufficient for the unfairness of the verbal assault.

If words were knives, I would be a murderer! And what murderers deserve is...

He mercifully interrupts the agony of my internal dialogue and brings me back to earth, buried knee deep between labels 'broccoli' and 'squash' marking the resting places of the seeds within my vegetable garden plot.

You know, there is a huge difference between calling yourself a gardener and being one. 

He is still seated on the ground, looking straight ahead. His hands are resting on his bent knees, showing dirt-covered flesh through the threadbare denim of his jeans. There is dirt under his fingernails, the blisters old and new, the cuts, the scrapes, the bruises... and the ugly scars... My manicured hands hang limp down my sides.

At this point I am not sure what is worse, calling him a pervert or calling myself a gardener with him sitting right next to me.  The heavy clouds of shame accumulate on the horizon and the sun disappears from the sky. I would give anything to take the words back. But, it's too late now. The large raindrops pound my face like thousands of tiny hammers.

Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! 

They go on and on and I am drowning in the rain of hopelessness as the dirt around my feet turns into muddy sinkhole...I sink deeper and deeper... There is no solid ground under my feet.

I don't... I don't think he could ever forgive me... and the grief over thought of losing him swallows the torrents of humiliation, leaving a gaping hole where I once used to be. I realize that without him, I am nothing.