face

Despite all intentions and desperate mental wrangling, the military became over time the sum of memory and image left to me. Trying to recall anything before reception was like pulling cream through parchment. I was willing to let go of many things without too much of a fight but when I began forgetting Tom's face I realized that my soul was diminishing. At the beginning, I dreamed of him nearly every night. Soft, comforting dreams sometimes or frantically, clutching, needful dreams more times. But even those would have been preferable to the eventual silence of memory, good or bad. I did not become desperate until nearly halfway through and my letters to Tom begging for pictures were slow and his response to the request seemed interminable.

By the time I opened the fat envelope containing necessary reminders, I had had only one dream of him and it was something I was in fact trying to forget. Of course, I still haven't. I was in a crowd of people, and I could see Tom's back but not his face. I called to him and could tell that he heard me by a slight turn of his head (face still obstinately obscured), and he laughed and he walked away. I was in my uniform and he rejected me along with the facade of my decision.

As I pulled the thick stack of pictures from the envelope, parts of my self sprang quickly back to life, prickly and uncomfortable from lying still for so long. It was only the second time the drill sergeant's had a chance to see me cry.