Six seasons. That’s all it was. Just one more season before He comes home…

Anxious, light green eyes search the world that lives outside her farmhouse window in Louisiana. The eyes roamed over the leaves that have scattered eagerly to the ground, casting their goodbyes to the aged trees. The eyes noticed the bark peeling away from the tree’s body, leaving a new skin in its wake. Snow came and went, with the wind blowing the chipped white gate in the breeze, swinging back and forth. The spring’s sunshine and bumblebees buzzed around her lovely old home, a constant humming playing as the woman’s orchestra.
Three years. Six seasons. Only three occasions of real joy; but that joy was soon swept away, as the man too were gone; the happiness soon forgotten with the man that brought it home. Just one more before He comes home.

Morning light shines through the woman’s bedroom. Her wispy blonde hair and small framed body, similar to a young child, cuddles in her warmth on the left side of the bed; the right cold and abandoned, but reserved for a reason. The blond curls fall to her narrow shoulders once she moves around the creaky lovely home. White paint, hues of red and yellow dress the fifty-year-old home, creating a charm of aged beauty to the residence. Her bare feet meet the wood. Rifling through her chest of clothes, she finds her cardigans neatly folded, pearls in their glass boxes, and recently ironed khaki pants, and one red summer dress.

“Where is my red cardigan?” She thought, “it was right there last night-I placed it here.”
Rifling through the chest, pearls and gold bangles danced around the box while the small pair of hands rummaged through the chest, groping for the red sweater. Standing up, the green eyes nervously sweep the room, surveying the unkept bed, the tangled pearls, and of course, the untouched right side of the room. His side. A memory resurfaced and her eyes were in danger of leaking tears; her husband always slept with his socks on, always sporting mismatched socks. God, she missed him.

“Is it over there?” she thought. Her head cocked to the side, her bony knees tethered together. She moved quickly, lengthened her arms, and stuck her butt out. “Nothing will touch his side of the room, but only my little hands. That is all. No other parts of me will make contact,” she said while her pink fingers lightly touched her husband’s clothing chest. “If my sweater is in here, I should look right? But if it were not in there, it would look even worse to be on this side of the room. Because he is not here, would he mind?” she continued to wonder. Her eyes widened, and her curls danced around her face, shaking her head violently, “NO! No,” she stated trying to calm herself, and ran down the stairs taking the steps two at a time.

A damp washcloth hangs its body over the sink-stained with a dark red. Her fingernails had specks of dried blood on them with scabs on her knuckles. She knew she shouldn’t have touched his side of the bed! “I must wipe this evidence off now, after all, it was my wrong doing!” She said to no one in particular while scrubbing her fingers with a washcloth. “It is his property after all! I was being so rude, so inconsiderate-now how must he think of me?!” She cried, setting down the cloth, digging her reddened fingers into her fine hair. The woman’s hair caught the morning light, her long hair reflecting gold perfection, her only perfection. The dampened washcloth was lifted from its rest, and put to work once more.

By nightfall, there were scattered white feathers accompanying the tile floor and ten washcloths hanging their bloodied bodies over the plastered white sink. Dried blood so turned into a flowing river of crimson.

More trees stripped of its bark and more leaves arrived. Snow then came, blanketing the white three-story house. More stained washcloths, more lost clothes, more torn feathers, and many more scabs. The season has arrived. Spring came, bearing cherry blossoms and cool evenings. It was this season!

As she combs her hair into a cascade of golden curls, framing her lovely face, the light hue puts the morning sun to shame. She puts on the red summer dress, which was easy to find in her chest, and looked at the results. The dress came up before her knees, with the red skirt flowing out shaping her small hips. The red cloth hugged her breasts and snaked around her slender neck. With some make up, a pair of leather sandals, and pearl earrings, she smiled. An hour later, the washcloths, the clothes, and scattered white feathers were discarded. The doorbell rang.

“Kennedy, my DARLING!” her husband exclaimed. By eight PM, the couple was lying in bed, eating dinner in peaceful coexistence while the TV was humming softly in the background.

“It really is so good to see you, Charles!” the girl smiled brightly while the man cupped her heart shaped face.
“Your lovely face is what got me through the worst of this war,” the man said with a sigh. “My unit and I had to...had to go through a lot. Imagining your face made me pull through.” He swallowed loudly. “I have to tell you something.”

“I cannot imagine! But well, your back! And I am so happy for that. And when you go out again, I will be even more delighted your back!” the girl exclaimed clasping her husband’s hands.

Her husbands faced turned into one of peculiarity.
“What happened to your hands? What are these…scabs, bruises, and-is that-dried blood?” Charles exclaimed loudly.

“What’s happened to you Kennedy?” his eyes searching her blushed face.
“Nothing-oh nothing, Charles. What were you going to say?” Kennedy looked at her husband, and not even this moment will ruin her rare joy in this life.

“I have decided to not go back in. I’m…I’m done being out there. I did my duty, and I want to live a simple life.”
Kennedy stared at the man her world revolved around for a long hard minute. She knew of her certain ticks and habits-the reasons for the discarded washcloths and disappearing chickens and their worn wings. But she knew her cure too. He had to come back from war-from devastation-for her neurosis to subside.
“Oh-but are you sure? Won’t you miss your unit?” Kennedy asked slowly, desperately trying to convince him. Suddenly the ring on her finger seemed to small for her now inflamed, pink fingers.

“Yes, I will. They are my best buds, but I decided this. I won’t go back on this decision, Kennedy.”

“Well, alright then. I know a quick fix.”

Four nights later, with her husband returning home from a simple job other than warfare, and the washcloths were disappearing one by one. Discarded. Gone. Had to be. The feathers on the tile floor were piling up. She could not help herself. Kennedy placed her wedding band on the chest, rubbing her hands. They were swollen and turned to a bright red, the bloodied rivers still present.

Her husband walked into their room.
“Where’d the chickens go?” Charles asked incredulously, angry even. Looking around the room, perhaps thinking the chickens were under their master bed.

“I-what?” Kennedy had no idea what he was talking about. She did not want to know. And then it caught her. The chickens she was raising the last time Charles was home-they hatched baby chicks. While Charles was gone, she could not stand them-the constant search for her cardigan, the incessant cleaning of her fingers, throwing away washcloth after washcloth made her more insane. Her face paled.

“I…I could not take care of them.” Kennedy looked at him slowly, rubbing her fingers.

“What-what do you mean you could not? Are they dead?” Charles asked louder, coming closer to the shrinking woman.

Kennedy’s eyes filled to the brim with tears. “Come take a seat, I need to tell you something.”

The next morning, Charles led Kennedy out of the doorway.
She was wearing her red sweater, a long skirt over her knees, a straw hat, and her pearl earrings.

“You ready?” Charles asked with concern. He stared into his wife’s troubled green eyes.

“Yes…yes I am.” Kennedy half smiled, and took his hand in confidence.

The couple walked out of the door, hand in hand, with Kennedy’s ring on her less swollen fingers into town.

Once the young couple arrived at the office, Charles ran a hand through his short sandy brown hair, now slowly growing out from its military haircut. “I won’t leave you during the session. I promise. We will get through this. This is the only way how.”

Kennedy smiled, and she let herself fall into her husband’s chest.
The secretary looked up from her desk, “The doctor will see you now. He is ready.”