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You are starting to forget his voice. It’s been so long after all, right, Flins?
In the gentle lapse of the cold sea, amidst the open sea, you stand, staring at the horizon. The sun barely sets, starting to go dim as time passes by like falling sands. The winter here is unforgivable, yet you find that the skin that tingles, that numbs your nerves, is nothing compared to the tightness in your heart.
Has it been years? Or has the passage of time slips and blends altogether into nothing? When was it, the date that he died? Do you still remember his face?
You watch the movement of the wave, the push and the pull, and think about the time where he stands still in the fields of verdant greens, hair being played by the summer breeze. It has no connection whatsoever, a disconnection, but the memory plays regardless, slowly like an antique cassette being rewound from the start.
You are starting to forget his face, you admit. The tiny details that make him him. So far, you remember him having pale complexion that often got slightly tanner when the sunlight shone longer in the day. He had platinum hair, almost silverish in some situation, with one unruly strand of hair that moved along with him. He didn’t have thick eyebrows, you reckon, and they were mostly the same colour as his hair. Did he has long lashes or short? Was his lips always chapped or well-maintained? What colour were his eyes, again?
Why do you start to forget him?
You don’t really know and that is the saddest thing to hear. Time has never been a kind mistress and grief is an encompassing friend that takes and never gives. There is no such thing as reprieve when you think about him, your heart burns in ways that you could not understand. You’ve lost lots in the past and despite that, you feel like this one is something you cannot get used to.
The seagulls in the distant caw, a flock of them starting to crowd the far sea. You watch some of them flying, soaring through the grey sky devoid of the sun, the colour of your heart that gently frozen solid like an everwinter. You start to walk deeper to the part of the sea, recalling the memory of him standing in the field of flowers. At that time, it was gorgeous, but when your heartache shows an imagery of him standing in the middle of the sea with his back faced upon you, you have nothing that serves as a response. You only stay rooted in place, the waves moving pass your ankles, watching your delusion that looks into the far end of the horizon as the sky grows darker and darker. The light from the sunset frames him ethereally, the whole scenery a work of art if it was a reality, but alas, together with the setting warmth, you find it pitiful instead.
See, Flins? When your imagery moves his head, having his face looking at you, the surface of it is all blur. You cannot remember the hues in his irises, the shape of his eyes, and the details you promised to commit in memory. In your illusion, the upper face blurs, like a scribble over a paper. No matter how much you try to push past that to recall, it couldn’t get through and you remain staring at a not-real, blurry sight of your once-lover.
You shouldn’t rely on a faulty thing easily corrupted by sorrow, you give it a thought now as your heart painfully aches—you really shouldn’t. Immortalising his form should’ve been done by you, so there is a certainty to preserve. Naive and cocky you were, thinking that as long as you can live long, he could live within your memory and heart too, but now, as your mind become something of jumbled puzzles, there is no fail-safe alternative to keep his form alive.
No pictures. No recordings. Not even a speck of lingering echoes remain. You have forgotten his voice, his face, and everything you hold dear related to him. His existence in your mind is only a concept.
Do you even still remember his name? It starts with an I, ends with an A, but you cannot assemble the letters in the middle into coherency. Maybe something with L, or something with G. Perhaps, a P, or a N. You cannot remember which one is which, or the syllables that make up his name. All the records related to him are gone. Someone had torn them off, scratched them from the list, in their fervour of being plunged to grief.
You once said: I’d rather forget about you than live with this hole.
But you never mean for it to happen, yet you think fate is cruel to execute such careless words. You were at lost, were in pain, and in desperate sense of wanting to let go, so the words you say did not mean that way. An outlet of frustration, a confused utterance.
There are fragments of things you can recall from the time you spent together with him—you remember the way he is weak towards small and cute creatures, you remember his love for spicy and spiced cuisines, you remember the selflessness he has whenever he sees someone in need, you remember the way he blushes whenever you compliment him, and so on.
Except jagged pieces of different types cannot be recombined into one whole picture. Thus, you’re stuck with a ghost that is incomplete in form. A smile you still vividly remember but not the colours of his eyes. The pale countenance he has but not the beauty mark he has under his left eye. The platinum, almost silver-ish, blond hair but not the rosiness of his lips.
He once said I love you but you cannot conjure the auditory memory of his voice. You once said I love you, too, yet you cannot put his name in the sentence you uttered lovingly so.
It was once frustrating. Now? Mind-numbing. You don’t bother trying anymore.
You remember this person like an unfinished painting that is devoid of colour and like the lapses of waves scattering the sand underneath your feet, the haunting existence of someone you used to know and love remains fractured in the recesses of your mind. The horizon darkens. The illusion dissipates, the imagery of him as ephemeral as the snowflake falling gently over the lonely world. The sun sets, the dark takes place. The bruised sky taunts you of your loss, over and over again, repeatedly, eternally never-ending, for as long as you live.
The water is freezing cold, Flins, and you still can’t remember his existence.