the Forgotten Never Forget

I’m watching you tonight with a soundless, shattered heart. I watch you longingly as you type a text on your phone, chuckling at a comedian on television. It’s been four years since you graduated and came home from college. When you, Peter, left town, you were the eighteen-year-old boy with alluring eyes and smile who I met that summer and promised to be my best friend forever. I, Marie, was the young, pony tailed girl who idolized everything you did and always wanted to be near you. All that hot summer, we were attached to the hip, racing up and down the street, jumping in the lake, and dancing underneath the bright moonlight with a Jason Aldean song softly playing on the radio in your truck. Everything was perfect until August. I even knew back then that you would forget about me. I already saw the distance in your eyes and it hurt inside but I had to let you go and I vowed to myself to wait for you anyway. As time went by and I waited for the letters that were never written, I faded away from your memory. Now you have a brand new life, never noticing that I’m still waiting.

I cry, I scream, standing right in front of you but you don’t see me. You feel the coldness of my despair but you just cover yourself up with a sheet. I furiously throw a newspaper across the room and pages fly everywhere. You just pick them up but what you read stops you in your tracks. It’s the obituaries. When you see my picture and name, all of the color leaves your face. I’ve died last week, having drank some poison one night. They found my body with Jason Aldean gently singing on my CD player in my car underneath the moonlight. Where were you? I was all alone!

“Oh Marie…,” you said with a quiver in your voice, looking sorrowfully at my picture. Tears are building up in your eyes. As you glance up into the mirror in front of you, you finally see me in the reflection. You drop the paper at your feet. My pale, lifeless, tragic face stares at you with blood tears rolling down my cheeks. You can’t talk, barely breathing. You put a hand on the mirror. Then, you can finally hear my voice.

I tenderly whisper, “Remember me Peter?” You just nod your head, weeping too hard now to speak.

“I just want you to know,” I continue, “that even though you forgot all about me, I never forgot you. I waited everyday for my best friend! I might have never had said this to you before but I truly love you Peter and never stopped when you left. When I realized that you even forgot that I existed, I lost something inside. I think that I was already dead before the poison. I love you and always will!”

All that you can do is cry as I finish my last sentence. With passion and slight rage, I then punch the glass of the mirror, smashing it and I disappear. You fall onto your knees, feeling ashamed, lost, and heartbroken. You try and try to get me to come back but I don’t. I can still hear your voice though. You are whimpering nonstop, “I love you too, I love you too Marie, I’m so sorry.”


(c)Lena Holdman, all rights reserved 2011

*COMPLETELY FICTIONAL* I was thinking about stuff one late Friday night and this story just popped in my head. I was also inspired by the song above: "Miss Invisible" by Marie Digby.