Origins

I sip the martini.
“We were kids,” I say. It’s true. It also means nothing. “Like Romeo and Juliet. Addled enough to believe that ‘love’ was some kind of valid reason to fuck up our lives. So we did. Or I did. He mostly just died.”
I swallow the olive and shrug. “We met up out of country where my folks couldn’t get at us. Went on a walk through the picturesque country-side one morning. Got less picturesque with the snake bites. Afterwards, I just remember waking up from two months of coma to be told he didn’t make it.”