Cupid’s one arrow

The gravel holding Alexander’s feet crunches with each step, so slow and strategically plotted. Countless names surround him, dates of the years he fails to remember, rotting lilies marking their graves; how could he ever know? Alexander squints, wondering how he’ll ever find her name amongst the thousands around her. It had once stuck out like a sore thumb: Cecelia Rosalie Croft. ‘Croft,’ being the last name he jumped to share with her, is something he’d never forget. For fifty-two years Cecelia held his surname and made it her own and now, engraved on her tombstone, it appeared like scrabble.

The issue is not his rotting memory, as Alex leads everyone to believe. The cemetery is probably over-populated, overflowing with corpses covered in flashy flowers. Maybe Cecelia’s coffin is stacked underneath another. To Alex, any amount of theorizing is better than admitting the hard truth: he can’t remember his way to her grave since his last visit, two days ago. Just two days ago. He should have thought this through, perhaps a trail of breadcrumbs would do the trick?

Not necessary. The bright orange flower just around the bend floods his visuals and without a moment of hesitation, his feet are dragging him towards it. Speedily paced, Alexander walks like he’s twenty-one again. He walks with a spring in his step, no cane in hand and a mind rich with memories. More specifically, the memory of him passing over the beautiful flower to her, tucking it behind her dainty ears.

She’d always had small ears, and Alex could envision them perfectly. They were littered with various piercings, all gold and matching, neatly lined next to one another. She didn’t make it look tacky. Nothing could ever look tacky on Cecelia, not even the purple and green knit jumper that Alex had scrunched his nose up at in store but smiled widely at when it clung to her pale skin. Alex could remember how she looked; how could he forget? Some memories last forever and this was one of them, but the feeling of her soft hand in his was one that was becoming more and more distant, untouchable and far.

Alex arrives at the grave he vaguely recognises, the blood orange flower being the only determiner. He squints once again, blue eyes scanning across the grey tombstone. Cecelia would have hated her tombstone. She’d have asked for it to be painted purple, maybe blue. She’d have wanted it to be painted sky blue, with clouds and stars, maybe even the moon. The sun too. She’d once told Alex this, and he’d shut down her dreams by telling her it was impossible. The sun, the moon, stars, a bright blue sky- they didn’t belong together in the same picture. But when he’d looked at Cecelia in her entirety, he’d realised this was not true. And looking up at the stars now, as the sun begins to fall beneath her headstone, Alexander lets out a small laugh. Cecelia had always said she loved the stars, and he can’t help but notice they shine a little brighter now that she’s joined them.

Alex’s eyes finally make sense of the words marking her grave: ‘Cecelia Rosalie Croft, 1938-2011.’ The years blur into one, an assortment of smiles and laughter, tears and anger. Even 10 years after he laid the bright flowers on top of her casket, his fingertips gliding across the side of the stained wood before he put her beneath the ground he walks upon, he struggles to remember. Alex had known his late wife since they were children, and they’d been tied together by an invisible string until the age of 21, where they cut it and tied another. The line connecting them became visible to their friends and family, uniting them as the Croft’s. 52 years of marriage, and Alex seems to only remember the worst.

Feeding her in the mornings, dressing her when she fell too sick. He’d even bring her flowers, handpicked himself and sometimes hand planted in their back garden. He’d pass them to her with a proud smile, a bouquet of red roses. He did this almost every week in her last months, and she never had the heart to remind him that she hated roses. She thought they were cliché and as she deteriorated before her husband, she watched him and his once rich memory go with her without a word.

Everyone who knew the Croft’s had said that Cecelia’s death was Alex’s murder. They’d never said it to his face, and they wouldn’t dare, but they’d also never had the opportunity. After the service, where he fumbled over his words at the podium, shaky hands crumpling up his butchered speech, he’d went into hiding. To begin with, he was easily found. Sitting there in the front window of their family home, in his usual armchair. It was next to Cecelia’s, and its empty spot resonated with the neighbours who passed by every day. They’d frown, troubled by the sight of the back of Alex’s body, his shoulder free of his wife’s head. Her death shook everyone who’d ever encountered her, but no one more than Alexander. He no longer wanted to be found. For the first few months, no matter who visited, he stayed sat still. Of all the hearts in the world, and the ones who remained around him, he was forever latched onto one without a beat.

With his back to Cecelia’s grave, Alex holds the marigold flower in between his shaky fingers. He fights his mind to bring back the image in his head, the one that’s greying as his days grow lesser. He needs to remember and soon enough, Alex is twenty-one again, and there she is in front of him. His mother-in-law had begged Cecelia to stick to the traditions, to wear a beautiful white gown on her big day. So, she wore a violet shade of purple, in typical Cecelia style. Cecelia made breaking the rules seem worthwhile and as he remembers the way she smiled up at him in her extravagant dress, her dress that was so completely her, that flowed at the bottom with each gush of wind and each dance move, Alex remembers what made loving her so addicting. He remembers the surprised look on her face and the fireworks that exploded in her green eyes when he pulled the bright orange flower out from inside his suit jacket, extending out his hand. Cecelia had always felt unheard, unseen in a world filled with extraordinary people. Alex didn’t know it but, gifting her favourite flower on their wedding day, a day already so perfect and special, made her feel the most loved she’d ever felt. Especially when his finger tangled itself in a strand of her soft hair, tucking it behind her dainty ear. He placed the flower with it gently, and Cecelia peaked through her glossy eyes, blinking away the sheet of tears that dared to spill. Instead, she let her head fall to her husband’s shoulder and she embraced him fully, inhaling his scent, his warmth. His presence. Alex did the same too, and as he sits with his back against the side of her tombstone, her favourite flower in hand, he remembers her head tilting back to look up into his lovestruck eyes. Her soft lips part to speak and as though he’s pressed pause on a remote control, the memory freezes. Alex’s eyes open abruptly, and he sees he is no longer at their wedding venue, holding onto the woman he loves. It’s dark and she is no longer in front of him, unable to say the words she’d uttered on the day of their unison. What had she said? How could he have forgotten? He had remembered those very words every night before he fell asleep with her in his arms, and every morning he awoke to an empty bed, to the scent of breakfast being made. They were gone. He closes his eyes again, squeezing them tightly shut. Remember, just remember, Alex tells himself with gritted teeth and he feels his hands growing shakier, petals falling from the dying flower in his hand.

Alexander feels guilty. Would his wife think lowly of him for forgetting? How would she feel if she knew he could barely remember her birthday, if it had not been imbedded in the stone he rests upon? His own mind is betraying him and as he grows weaker, he dreads the day he forgets her face. Her beautiful, mesmerising face. That’ll be the day his heart stops beating, but Alex feels as though it did a long time ago. He’d never believed in soulmates, in the universe bringing two people who were meant to be together back to one another, in fate, or a match made in heaven. Cecelia proved that this could be true, except it isn’t. They aren’t in heaven. This is Earth, and it’s cruel. Sometimes cupid runs out of arrows and shoots one person, not two.

His eyes flutter shut softly this time and just before they do, a tear falls between the shutters of his lashes, staining his wrinkled cheeks. The darkness engulfs him and as her marigold flower drops to his rapidly slowing heart, his body starting to still, hands growing limp without hers; her forgotten words echo throughout his mind. Her soothing voice sends him to sleep one last time, and Alex feels content with never having to wake up without it again.