Walk Down Memory Lane
She plopped herself down on the floor and sat the worn shoebox beside her. She took a sip from her glass and placed it on the coffee table before dumping the contents of the shoebox in front of her.
She took another sip and assessed the situation. There she sat amid her memories, tiny snippets forever engraved on paper. The past year of her life lay before her, stirring up many sentiments inside her. She held the glass to her lips a final time, tasting the tangy liquid before she began to sort through the reminiscence.
She scanned the pile, her eyes skimming over each item before they rested on a picture of the two of them together. She gently plucked the picture from the pile and gazed upon the stilled image. They stood together, arms encircling one another, in front of a lake. She closed her eyes as her mind took her back to that day.
"Aww, he looks so sad," she said tears building in her eyes.
"Come on. It's a fish! How can you come fishing and then sympathize with the ones you catch?" he said looking at the fish and then back to her.
She sniffed a little before asking, "Can we please just let him go?"
He scoffed, "Let him go! What will we eat for supper if we let him go?" He raised an eyebrow and tried to remain firm but immediately melted when she looked up at him with her big green eyes.
He carefully removed the hook from the fish's mouth and slid him back into the water. "There. You satisfied?"
She nodded.
She smiled as she remembered him suffering through a supper of trail mix that night all the while insisting that fish would have been a much more suitable meal. She quickly tossed the picture, along with the memory, back into the shoebox before reaching for another.
This picture was of her. She sat alone on a child's swing set. Her chest tightened as she remembered what led up to this immortalized moment. The memory came in a wave as she squeezed her eyes tightly shut.
"Please. It's just for a few hours," she begged.
His expression never changed nor did he turn from the television set.
"It's the holidays, honey. My mother's expecting us." She stood in front of the TV before trying to speak again. "Honey, please go with me."
He seemed to be looking through her as she stood in his way. He remained inexpressive as he spat out the word, "Move."
"But, baby-" she pleaded
"I said move!" He grabbed the remote and threw it in her direction.
It connected with her right eye and she cried out in pain. She fell to the floor covering her rapidly swelling face with her hands. He was instantly at her side, apologizing profusely.
She sighed heavily as she held back the tears that threatened to spill from beneath her eyelids. She ended up going to her mother's alone that year. No one questioned the black ring around her eye, nor did she try to vindicate herself, or him for that matter.
That ensued the beginning of the end. She tossed that picture atop the other in the shoebox. And she reached for another.
She spent over an hour involved in this staggering walk through memory lane. Finally she had tossed the last picture in the pile and decided the time had come.
She gathered the shoebox along with a few other essentials before stepping outside into the crisp autumn air. She placed the box on the ground in front of her and removed the lid. She emptied the contents of her glass into the box before lighting a match and throwing it into the box.
As she watched her memories go up in flames she couldn't help but think of how drastically her life had changed in the short amount of time since he'd been gone. Though there were good memories, they could never amount to the more inauspicious moments they shared. She could hear the words of her friend ringing through her ears as she turned from the blazing pile and adopted that phrase as the beginning of her new life:
"Walk on. Never look back."