It's Never Just Goodbye // Ed Sheeran

Photograph

Ed

You won't ever be alone, wait for me to come home - Ed Sheeran

 I think I’m going crazy. I’ve been having the same recurring dream for the past week. Set in my old flat, I lay on the couch in the dark like many other nights spent there. Pictures laid out everywhere around me. All over the place. Hanging from the ceiling, taped to the wall, even cluttered on the floor.

It’s Alice in all of them. Smiling at me, holding me, kissing me. She was mine in all of them.

The same dream.

The same pictures.

The same Ed in all of them. Wandering around the living room, looking closely at all of them. They were sort of like little windows into our lives and curiosity would hit me.

Then, the pictures would turn bad once I’d hit the kitchen. Us fighting. Her cheating. Nothing ever the same.

And then I’d wake to see Nina on the other side of my bed. Sound asleep, snoring lightly. Her hand over her eyes. Mascara smeared down the side of her pale cheek the nights she forgets to take off her makeup. I’d finally pull myself out of the nightmare and realize that it’s over.

Alice is gone.

Nina is here.

Usually, I’d scoot closer to Nina and make myself fall back to sleep. Only to relive the same dream. Tonight, I just couldn’t handle it anymore. I slipped out from the covers and left Nina asleep. The carpeted floor creaking below my bare feet. I prayed for silence. Making it down the stairs quickly, I grabbed a beer, and settled my eyes on the sofa.

I stored an old shoe box underneath my couch. Something that I had just remembered. It had laid there, dusty and untouched, since I’ve moved in. Hoping for some type of solace, I sat down my unopened drink and kneeled down. I pulled out the ripped box.

Pictures filled up the box until the very opening. Some blurry, taken quickly when she knew I didn’t want to be photographed. I was so foolish back then. Hating the fact she wanted shoot pictures of me rather than her.

So insecure.

Half of them were from her Polaroid camera. A stupid birthday present I thought she’d never use. I was proved wrong quickly after that. Everywhere we went, that camera was around her neck or stuffed into her backpack. Every chance she got, the camera would click and she’d stuff the new picture into the pocket of her jeans.

And the memories come back to me in flashes. Hitting me in the chest where my frozen heart laid. The ice around the beating thing thawing itself.

Instantaneously, the pictures surround me with the biggest nostalgic feeling. Tears burning the corner of my eyes, I look closer at photograph of her and my old cat. The smile covering my face from ear to ear.

Her face in pictures looks so easy to love. The way she stood, proud...happy, even. And the way I looked at her. My eyes showed that all I had for her was love.

I dug through the box. Picking out the favorites. Finding the old pictures taken at family events. I never realized how much that meant. Being invited to family birthdays or holidays. Until now, it never occurred to me that, that showed how close her and I actually were.

Some were bent. Years of moving them from place to place, they were ought to be.

I chuckled to myself, remembering angrily ripping them off the cement walls at my old flat. It had have been last year, maybe. Even making the effort to drop them off at her mother’s house. It was to hurt her, I think. Or to get her image out of my head.