While Trying to Forget

I watched the world through my camera lens until there was nothing left. Nothing but a rectangle of space, reflected light. When I looked through that space, it didn’t hurt anymore. The mysteries locked up somewhere inside my heart vanished with my peripheral vision, and the steps where I saw you last became just steps again. They were steps, with the light falling on them in such a perfect way. Perfect like the lightness of your hair, and the way you smiled. Perfect like the way you once told me I looked pretty. And in the second that the shutter was closed, in that darkness, I remembered you. I remembered just how awful it was that you were gone, and just how terrible it was that it was my fault. I remembered that it hurt, that it hurt so badly that I wanted to curl up and cry for days. I remembered that I hadn’t, because these are the things I keep stopped up in my chest, the things that stay there and make it hard to breathe. I remembered just how ridiculous it was for me to even think about you, because you are so far gone. I remembered that I probably won’t ever see you again, and that you won’t care. I looked at the picture I had taken and remembered that I had forgotten, for a moment, so I put the camera back up to my eye and tried to see the world again. I spent a long time staring through that tiny hole, but I still only saw your ghost, floating up the steps, haunting me. I felt one lonely tear streak down my cheek. I considered photographing it, seeping into the ground, but I didn’t feel like it. So I went home and sat on my bed and tried to forget, and ended up thinking about you more than I have since I saw you that day, on the stairs.