I stared at my body in the shower, the many scars, the tattoo. Its been twenty years, I still remember.

The tattoo is on my stomach, a car driving into a sunset on a deserted road. Underneath it reads Nunquam Alieno. Latin for Never Forget.

He never wanted to be forgotten.


I was 16, he was 18, we were in love. The year was 1980, we were racing down the street around midnight in his daddies car. The Arizona desert at midnight was amazing, we were having a picnic while jokingly looking for aliens.

I can never forget that night. The way his hair was blowing about in the wind, his pure smile, and his eyes barely visible sparkling with what I could only hope was true love. I guess we had a few to many beers.

I was suppose to be home at 9, I guess you could say we more than missed curfew. I was lying in his lap as he drove us home. Staring out at the stars in the open convertible, laughing. Suddenly he swerved, to this day I'm not sure why. Though I think it was a rabbit. The car skidded as his reactions was slow.

It was all a blur.

We ended up in a ditch. I awoke, dazed and confused, and turned to see his blood leaking from his lips and dripping onto my hand.

He was gone.

I screamed.

I crawled out of the car through the window holding myself. The car was skewered, heaps of metal every where, he was skewered. One image I'll never forget is his leg sticking out of the side window, his arms out stretched towards my seat. Did he push me out of the way? I don't know I wasn't awake.

Limping over to the side of the road I could see the tire marks in the ground. He swerved at the last moment, if he hadn't...my side of the cab would have been destroyed.

I sat at the side of the road hugging my legs to me until sunrise. Never shedding a tear, I never did. I was in shock, still am really. I was never quite the same.

In the morning a car passed, saw me, saw the wreckage, the car, the blood, and raced off to the nearest...wherever to call the police.

I was rushed to the emergency room and looked over, as they pieced together his corpse. Nothing was wrong with me, he had saved me completely.

I took myself to his corpse and just sat there and held his destroyed hand. He wasn't gone, he never would be. I can still see him opening the door to my home and crying "Honey I'm home."

His best friend was the first to show up. He cried, he hugged me, and he cried, and I stared. I was there for him in my dazed way. We got married 5 years later and have a child today. Though, I was never really his.

His best friend took me to a tattoo parlor the same day, and I got the tattoo.



Never Forget. Nunquam Alieno.

I never will I never can.

I became empty. I couldn't live with my source of life gone.

Nunquam Alieno.

I hope that damned rabbit is still alive.