Catalya - Ms. Koya

She wandered down the long winding road, mental pictures flashing in her mind.

His eyes, those eyes. The two sapphire beauties that held the heavens, the skies and water in their pointed gaze. 

She remembered the tears in them, the way they glazed over at her. 

The pain etched across his tender, lovely features, his helplessness as he lay there in her arms, the blood from the bullet wound spreading over his white shirt. 

He whispered his last words, "Catalya, please remember to forget me." And as she proceeded to tell him "No, that's not right. It should be me not forgetting to remember you", he went limp in her arms, where she had held him tightly, not letting go. His body went cold, his eyes glazed over, leaving her. 

Leaving her? Throwing her, more like, into an abyss of loneliness, sending her hurtling into an arroyo of despair, of unthinkable pain, of indescribable sorrow.

It was deep, deep anguish. She was lost, and alone. She died day and night, her battles with the closet and under-bed monsters becoming more intense. She fought and fought, some she won, some they won, roaming without caution in her dreams and mind. Those nights were the hardest. She could struggle no more. She was tired. 

One day, whilst she stopped fighting her battles to regain sustenance and existence, his last words "Please don't forget to remember me" engulfed her mind, from their engraving in her heart. They had been burned in there by his lips, her last memory in her private hell. She retrieved his final words from her archives of profound sorrows and then it hit her. An earth shattering, cosmic blow hit her that he had said, instead: "Please remember to forget me". 

As she finally embraced those words, her defensive walls of pain coming crashing down, she came out of her reclusive state. Her resolve was weakened. She knew she had to change. She had to restructure her thinking. She had to reach out. She had to love. 

She was still broken, healing up slowly, picking at the scabs of her wounds. She had loved and had lost, because of a stray bullet, damaging her in ways death never can. She had to remember to forget...and she did.

Time will tell, they say..and time did tell, it told a beautiful story of love and healing. And as she walked down that long winding road, once again, smelling the catalya flowers by the side, she remembered it all, mental pictures flashing in her mind. She was whole again.