TheVeryHungryBookworm ISSUE#1

The Photo:

PRESENTED BY: ChibsandChill

She looks down on the photo with only the hints of a smile. The edges are yellowed and torn. She used to take such good care of it, polishing it, keeping it out of the sunlight and even replacing it with a newer copy. There was an inscription on the back of it, small lanky letters from the other person in the photo. A greeting? Goodbye? Congratulations? She could not remember anymore. The time had flown since she last read the writing and saw the writer.

The memory is tainted by grief, losing innocence, sadness, and anger. What used to be a happy photo of remembrance turned into a photo that only reminded her of what once was and what would never again be. A strange but familiar feeling wells up inside of her. It brings forth a painful bodily cramp and a drying to the mouth. Her eyes tear up, and her stomach heaves with repressed sobs. Tear after tear flows down her flushed cheeks, staining the old photo in her shaking hands.

She can remember the day clearly. Her parents had taken them to the park. The sun was shining without a cloud in sight. It was the perfect day. Birds were singing, ducks were paddling in their lake and children were running around laughing gleefully. She can remember her innocence back then, how naïve to the true cruelty of life, and how she used to take things for granted. How many more moments like that could they have had together if only she had known the future.

Her parents had snapped the photo without them noticing, their mouths wide open in silent laughter, hands holding their stomachs and two cones of ice-cream laid forgotten on the red-checkered blanket. A sad smile grew on her face as she gently strokes the faded face of him. A broken sob well up inside of her, her free hand flying up to cover up her mouth as the sobs wracked her body.

"Mom says I need to move on from you but I don't know if I can" She sobs, one hand now clutching her shirt above her heart. The feeling of what could only be pure heartbreak was soaring through her body. "I think of you everywhere I go, I can see you in a cloudless day filled with trips to the beach, I can see you in her face, in her eyes and her smile. Wherever I go, your ghost follows me, haunting me. I don't know what to do," dry sobs bubbled out of her mouth at the end of her shaky sentence.

She strokes the photo again, this time her youthful face devoid of any wrinkles and signs of age. She observes the fullness of her hair, the shine and sheer length of it. Oh, how she missed him, how she missed herself and how she missed the good old times. How she missed the easy smiles and laughter, the constant presence of sunshine where there now is only darkness and deafening silence.

"No," she whispers with only a hint of shakiness in her voice. "No, I can't live like this! You can't keep following me!" the woman yelled. Where there used to be tears of sadness there were only tears of frustration and anger. All her sadness having transformed into extreme anger. Anger at him for leaving her and anger at herself for having done this to herself. This was no life to live, no sense in living if all she did was remember him and what they had. No, she had to move on for herself. She needed to let go of him, she needed to finally let him rest.

She pushed herself to her feet with one strong movement, fueled by the assault of feelings she had. "And I know just how to do it" She would regret this later, she knew she was, but she also knew that this was the only way to be free from both him and the memories he brought with him.

The picture she dropped into a small ceramic bowl that she had long since forgotten. She stroked a trembling finger down their happy faces before turning around and walking over to the small table in the middle of the old treehouse. She never thought she would use it again, never thought she would pick up the lighter for anything else than to light a smoke and poison her lungs. But times change, and now she needs to change too. She hadn't smoked for years, but she hoped there would still be a little fire left in the small box, enough to get rid of an empty memory.

She grabbed it with determined hands, no shake was left in them. The only sign of her previous episode could be seen in her puffy red cheeks, her tired and red irritated eyes. Mascara had left a steady trail of black tears under her eyes as if marking her forever with grief. The woman walked back over to where she had left the bowl, lit up the lighter and dropped it into the bowl with the picture after having set one edge on fire. She stared at it with cold eyes. Is this what liberation feels? Is this what finally getting closure means? All she felt was a big hole in her heart, a black hole in her soul and the warmth from the fire.

His face got eaten by the fire first, his youthful grin twisting and turning into an ugly frown. Then she too got burned by the fire, both her and the beautiful view behind them crumbling into nothing but a mess of brown, black and broken dreams.

And there she stood, staring at the roaring fire, staring right into the flames as if she could see him in it. Perhaps she could, perhaps that's why she joined him in eternal slumber and peace.