Her picture

 I wrote this a while back. I'm not going to say if it's based on anything or not, it's just something that came out of me, as things often do, and I had to write it down. Here it is:

I don’t even have a picture of her. Not a single piece of evidence that she exists. She never gave me anything tangible, but she’s taken plenty.

Her dark brown hair, streaming down her back and surrounding her face, haunts my mind. It’s dead weight inside me, like webs in the corner of an abandoned house. I don’t need her, she doesn’t need me. I know that now. I was fooled, though, like I often am, by people who pretend to care.

I know she thinks of me; I think of her. Probably too much. It’s hard not to. Why don't I have a picture of her? I don’t really need one, though, because her face is burned into my memory. No matter how old I get or how senile I become, I will always remember how seeing her face made me feel.

I saw innocence. I saw the little girl that pretended not to know how spoiled she was. Even as a young woman that innocence was there, stirring inside her as she snorted cocaine off of a wooden coffee table, the front door wide open. Sunlight streamed in.

She cared more about the damned coke than she did me. She greeted her supplier like an old friend, while I sat in the corner watching her snort her life away. $200 for a high that nearly killed her.

I sat with her, we hugged and held each other on her bed. I left. She cried. I cried. I still cry, wondering why she cast me away like a sack of garbage. Am I garbage? Why do I feel so bad?. Why do I cry? Who is this woman? And why don’t I even have a picture of her?