Sometimes I go almost a whole week without thinking about her. I live the way other people do, moment to moment, troubling myself only with matters of immediate importance. It is not a state that I consciously achieve but one granted to me by the merciful mother time. It is as if my old life never had existed at all, as if my past itself is a ghost of what I've become,as if it isn't substantial enough to haunt. Then just when I think I'm in the clear, something happens and all of that changes. Mabye I see someone on the street that reminds me: a curve of a cheek, the flashing eyes of an actress, little wry grin and there I am, falling, powerless again, prisoner of memory and of what once was. Or she comes to me in dreams, near enough to touch, feel the heat of her skin, smell the perfume and cigarettes in her hair. She strokes my neck and face gently, twisting my hair, pulling it, her hands are whispers,beckoning me into a trance. Sorrow rains down around me. I know what she has to do to go on, and I am one of the sacrifices she makes in order to be comfortable. I love her enough for two: her scorn and unease with me is not enough to undermine this. What is sad is that she will never in a thousand years understand that, or feel it enough to see me not as some bitter foe, plotting and scheming against her, but for who I really am: someone who is pathetic,lost, but growing up,someone brave and sincere, someone who would take a bullet for her.
