My friends joke that my memory is like a cash register. Never forgetting. Always remembering every interaction, every word and recording, like transactions. I take pride in this. I’m constantly correcting & recovering their stories, their anecdotes. I’m sure it’s irritating for them, as it is for me. Remembering everything is often times a curse. It creeps up on you and latches on and you start reliving it all. All over again.
For someone who prides herself on his, for someone who has this reputation, I find myself struggling to remember what you look like. It hasn’t even two months since I saw you last but already I find myself laying awake in vain to remember what your face looked like. I get snatches of it but they disappear before I can hold on. I’ve been reduced to picturing a certain actor’s face and then I start altering features until I can get to what I think you look like. This doesn’t always work. More often than not, I’m back to seeing his face again. With the exception of the scar. That scar less than half an inch long that sits across your right cheek. When I saw you, after we sat down and were facing each other – clearly, I remember looking at it and realizing that I had forgotten about it. My fingertips have grazed it’s grooves. It remains my favorite part of your body. I wanted to reach out and feel it again, but I didn’t. I should have. Maybe it would have helped me remember.
I remembered you once. On the cusp of jet-lagged sleep, it startled me awake. I sat upright in bed and covered my eyes with my hands because your face was just so real. It felt like you were there and all I had to do was reach out and there you’d be. I was so startled and for the briefest of minutes, I actually couldn’t forget. And then I did and I couldn’t get you back again. Nothing I could do or think of would conjure you up.
I convince myself that it’s better this way. That something larger than you or I is conspiring to make me forget your face because then it couldn’t hurt anymore. And maybe I’d slowly start forgetting you. But even as I think this now I know it’s not true. That no amount of trying on my part would ever make me forget you. I wouldn’t allow myself to.
So for now, I will resolve to keep trying. And keep imagining that scar on your right cheek in the hopes that it will bloom into your face.
