The Photograph

A Story by Thefierycrash

As he lie in bed, the thought hit him like a bolt of lightning from the blue. The photograph. The photograph that her mother had taken. The silly clothing that he wore as he stood next to her, smiling. The expression of true happiness in his eyes that he hadn't been able to fake since.

But it wasn't the photograph that he remembered. It was that he kept that photograph under his pillow for so long when they were together. Every night, he would pick up his pillow before he went to bed and stare at it, at her, at them. He kept the photo until it was tattered and worn. He would flip it over and read the words that she had written so perfectly on the back; words that he had long since forgotten, though he still remembered the cursive blue penmanship after all of these years. When he put the photograph under his pillow, it was the closest he could be to actually being with her. He did the same with all of her dozens of letters, this ritualistic folding and unfolding, staring and remembering.

It had been over ten years and, likely, hundreds of dreams, since then. The dreams started out sexual, but, over the years, as the reality that she would never again be his rooted itself in his mind, became the dreams of someone who had forgotten how to dream. Every time he acknowledged that the dreams had stopped, one would reappear like a tumor. They would see each other somewhere--in a mall or some other public place. He would acknowledge her new boyfriend and say something polite, something appropriate. He would ask how she was doing. Then he would wake up knowing that even this--this fake memory of something so simple as seeing her in a public setting and sharing words--would likely not happen.

All of the artifacts had long since been destroyed, but the memories couldn’t be. They would be his secret, his burden to bear. They were the memories of a mad man whose heart refused to forget the elation that only she caused.