Retiring with Sin

Retiring with Sin

Every time I see a knife magazine, I think of you. You told me you collected them. Were good with them. Best way to kill a man. Watch him die slowly slice by slice. You told me all that after I slept with your wife. You never found out. She never told you. I think your intuition was sharp. I wasn’t the only one. I expect that’s why you never came for me while you could. I moved. Forgot. Except when the mail comes. Some outdoors kind of slick publication selling everything you need to survive. Pages full of knives. Today your wife called me to tell me you were dying. Cancer. I think she saw it as a window for me to confess. To ease my conscience. Something she could never do even after you divorced her. Pregnant by another man. Not me. Just one too many. You went on to marry again. Took care of your two daughters and grandson. Those West Virginia waters turned bad on you. Chemical plants and engineers who steered them in the right direction never had a chance to turn them around once all the spills dumped into the Ohio River. Newspapers were full of how the carcinogens contaminated access to the town’s drinking water. Purification got only so much. I never made the phone call. Figured it was too long ago. But some nights, long after the mail and taking out the trash, I get this nightmare, a man with a knife.