Simon Riley who’s only ever been in love once in his life but he can no longer remember her face or voice anymore :(. It was back when he was a teenager. Early 2005 to late 2007. It was such a long time ago and so much has happened in the span of 18 years, so many memories repressed yet so many that remain engraved in his head no matter how many times he’s tried to push them back. He still thinks about her, or the idea of her. He knows she exists because he still has the ring she exchanged with him. Along with old tattered notes she used to slip into his backpack. The ink is smudged and faded, no longer visible, the paper is crumpled and torn. She wrote in cursive, and he was never good at reading cursive so he couldn’t even attempt to make out what it said even if he tried. Every-time he tries to conjure up a memory it’s blurred and eerie. Her voice is a thousand different voices but no voice at all, her face isn’t a face, it’s a concept of a face. It’s like if a blind person tried to describe what a their face was like. They broke up because he enlisted, he never heard from her again. He misses her so much, but he can’t help but feel crazy. He knows she existed, he remembers how he felt about her. Yet there’s no physical evidence of her and he’s so tattered that he can’t even remember who she is. He doesn’t have the heart to go to his childhood home, he’s sure there’s a picture in there somewhere of them but going home is a whole different box of demons that he doesn’t want to open up. He’s not sure if he’s religious or not, but on rare nights, alone in his flat, he prays for her to be sent back to him. To have a sign that she’s somewhere out there. A prayer that won’t be answered because he’s not allowed to have anything good in his life. And he knows that. So he just wallows in his misery. Thinking of what if’s and what could have been’s. Wondering if he’ll ever get to see the love of his life again.
