Occasionally, before he went to bed, or in any private moment, he would slide it out and look at it. Any time he thought he was alone;he would trace the outline of her face in a photograph, familiarizing himself with her features. Rummaging in a drawer,
fiddling with the contents of a shelf, it turned up in any possible place. It drew his crystal gray eyes and held them;
and once he started looking at it, it was hard to look away from her lovely face.
The picture itself was worn; both from time and the touch of his fingers. The color was faded, the lined cracked.
It had the look of a possession that was cherished, adored.
It shows a young girl. Her face is oval-shaped. Her thick hair falls in a dense black cascade down past her narrow shoulders.
Her tresses float softly around her face, framing it flawlessly. Everything about her is small, except her full lips and lustrous brown eyes.
Her head cocked slightly to one side, she smiles the merest curl of her lips. A streak of sunlight slants towards her and plays on her face,
illuminating the white of her skin and lightening her curls to a light golden brown colour, illuminating the smattering of her cheeks.
Minute dust motes dance around her, visible only when the sun shines on them.
As he watches it his fingers slide across her face, her eyebrows, the curve of her cheek, the line of her flawless hair, and her white shoulders above the neckline of
her t-shirt. It traces the slim arrow of her waistline. The act is so faultless you can tell he has done it several times and afterwards just drinks in her features,
although he already knows them by heart.
The surface of the photo is worn by the motions of his hands over the course of many years.
I never understood his strange obsession. I had to see the girl this photo showed for me, to be able to understand. It wasn't until I saw the older version of her,
recognizable by her most striking features; the thick scarlet mane, lightly puffy nose, soft brown eyes. She was no longer a little girl;
she was a beautiful young woman.
At that time I understood that he treasured the photo because it was all he had of her. He had her picture because he couldn't have her.
That picture was the reminder of his loss,
his failure. If she was forbidden, he could at least have this piece of her, the only thing she allowed him.
For a long time I thought that he was in control of his emotions-he now understood what he could not have and accepted it.
I thought he was content with just having a photo of her.
I was wrong. He had known her and after she refused to acknowledge him, he was even more obsessive by anger, misery and craving. His obsession only fanned the flames of the fire.
She had provided the spark, but it was he who nurtured it and allowed it to grow. There are still moments when his eyes glaze over and stare at her still face, memories fighting for his attention.
His behavior was cold as ice. He never allowed his face to show what he felt, schooling it until it was bland and inscrutable. He was completely unreadable and he could be scathing at times, his gray eyes no longer bright. But in those secret moments, her fire would melt the ice that surrounded his heart for the small amount of time. Fire and ice each fought for triumph, but ice that has survived and even thrived for so long cannot simply be melt, and fire so scorching cannot simply die.
One day I came across the photograph while looking for something in his cupboard. I couldn't help peering at it myself. Running it through my fingers, I flipped it backwards and saw two dates scribbled on the back. The top date is in perfect royal-blue cursive, but the bottom one, about two decades after the first one, is barely legible. A birth date and a death date,in my handwriting.
