[LaneyDoll]

~Tattered~

The edges of the photograph were tattered from the constant handling of the print. It was the only tangible souvenir I had of her, of us, although I had bittersweet memories in my mind. But the photograph was my favorite refuge. I wondered what she would think if she knew the amount of time I spent with her picture. If she could feel my fingers lightly tracing the smoothness of her skin, or the strong outline of her jaw, or the fullness of her soft lips, or the dark beauty of her hair.

I wondered if she would think I was crazy because I wouldn't frame the print and preserve it; I had thought so myself. But to frame it would create a barrier to my longing touch, my imagined contact with her.

A haunting reminder, her picture allowed me to kiss her every night before I went to bed. A simple familiarity that soothed me by allowing me to escape into a world where she was mine and I was hers. A nightly ritual performed without fail, comforting yet eternally new. I feared that time would eradicate her picture. The oils from my skin, the moisture from my lips and the constant contact were surely damaging.

But I could never resist the lure of the tattered picture beside my bed. The only tangible souvenir of the most fulfilling love I had ever known. The delicate proof that a love, worthy of fairy tales, could exist. And it existed now, in the gentle touches and spellbinding caresses bestowed upon a tattered photograph, of the one who would always, even in absence, have my love.