Vicar

Dear Lord,

I have tried, all my life, to live by your commandments.

But right now, I am failing more than ever.

I cannot love my neighbour.

For he has stolen my wife, my love from me.

I sit here, heartbroken, Lord.

I watched her just now, after I said I’d come to my office to work on my sermon, run over to his, like she has been doing with increasing regularity since we moved to this parish.

I cannot pray. The peace I find with you evades me.

And so, I am writing to you, Lord. I am crying out for help.

I love my wife. I have always felt unworthy of her. But she seemed to love me. She’d been devoted to me, until we transferred to this parish. Since then I’ve felt her drift away from me.

I have been lax in praying, in my duty as vicar, caught up in my own problems, spying on my wife, who loves our neighbour.

She disappears into that house and comes back glowing. Humming to herself. Happier than I’ve ever seen her.

Dear Lord,

I got it wrong! So wrong. Thank you for answering my prayer, setting my heart at rest.

I was sitting here, pouring out my despair into this journal.

I looked up and there she was, standing over me, smiling.

In her hand the most gorgeous bouquet of flowers.

‘I’ve been learning flower arrangement from Peter’s wife,’ she said. ‘Do you like it?’

‘Oh I… I thought…’ I blustered.

‘You silly man, you didn’t think I was cheating on you with Peter?’ she said, lightly swatting me with the flowers. ‘Peter has been away all this time. It’s his wife I’ve been seeing, learning flower arrangement from her, wanting to do something with my time when you’re busy with your various duties.’

And here I’ve been driving myself crazy with suspicion.

I should have trusted in you.

In her, in my love.

These flowers are beautiful. But, ow… their thorns are quite sharp enough to draw blood.

I...

I feel giddy, in fact I feel so giddy that I am ill…

Dear Lord,

I feel… quite strange.

Insubstantial. Corporeal.

Oh... someone is sitting at my desk. Slumped upon it.

Wait that… that’s me.

If that’s me then who am I?

Am I… am I a ghost?

Then… that body, slumped on my desk…

I am dead?

How?

The flowers…

I thought it was a thorn that stung me - but it must have been a wasp that snuck in somehow.

But my wife, she knows I’m severely allergic to wasps. She’d have checked…

She...

My wife. She’s… she’s smiling. Laughing. With my dead body cooling there on the desk.

She’s…

No…

But she is. Kissing Peter's wife.

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