If music be the food of love, play on.

And there she was. My heart was racing so fast I felt like it was going to just sprint out of my chest. Her long hair just effortlessly dropping down her back, one side of her fringe tucked behind her ear. The sun was setting and she was sitting on top of what seemed a brick wall, a short one, all I could see was the side of her face, she was looking down reading a book and all I could focus on was her: the side of her face. It was so perfect, almost like someone had painted her and outlined her features. I could follow it with my finger, the dark line that trailed of from her forehead all the way down to her neck. The line was so smooth, no bumps, nothing, just perfect. I was scared, she called me sounding very upset and decided we should meet at the place where we first met: green way park. All that was going through my head was maybe that this was it, maybe she decided it was over and she just simply had enough. Of me. That thought made me want to break down, a draining feeling, like all of a sudden someone just sucked out all of the blood and my emotions got pulled out with it. Other than what I expected her to tell me, I couldn’t quite understand what else it could be that she wanted to tell me that was so urgent, so important. Violet, her name, had been on holiday with her family and arrived a couple of hours before she called me to meet her. Everything was fine up till then, we talked everyday for hours and hours, on the phone and online. What did I do wrong? Or did she do something? Did she maybe cheat on me? I would forgive her is the truth, I would be angry but I would forgive her because being with her is like experiencing a miracle, like your dead and all of a sudden someone brings you alive, helps you breathe, think, eat and love. She did that to me every single second I was with her. I couldn’t help but over think things and go into so much depth in every topic or subject or reason it would be that she brought up. I never show how worried I am about everything that links with her. I just don’t want to lose her. The thought makes me physically heave. I’m closer now to her, I call her name ‘Violet’ she doesn’t turn around just looks up straight ahead and says in a pleading voice ‘Stay where you are, don’t come any closer’. I didn’t go any closer, I was just stunned, so extremely confused my brain was slowly becoming toxic soup. I asked her ‘why Violet?’ she sighed heavily, ‘because I’m not who I used to be’. I responded in a breaking voice, I knew it was over then and there, ‘what do you mean?’. She said ‘Something happened on holiday, something really … really bad’, I told her ‘Violet please whatever it is I’m sure we can sort it out’ at this point tears were falling down but my voice was somehow consistently stable at this point. I went closer and she stopped me so quickly, held her hand out and thumped it against my chest and exclaimed, ‘just stay where you are! please’ I asked pleadingly, ‘but why won’t you tell me what it is?’ she said in her calm, slightly husky voice, ‘Rob, I want you to move on, Ok? find a girl, a beautiful girl who is perfect in every way, who loves you’ I exclaimed, ‘don’t you love me violet? huh? don’t you? what is this even about? how can you just tell me to come here and say all this to me without helping me understand why?’. She stood up, put one leg down from the wall at a time and just said, ‘Rob before you see this I want you to keep in mind that what I’m doing is because I love you so much and just want you to be happy without having to face what your about to’. I was bracing myself, just thinking what she could be talking about. Her hair was now falling on the front of her left shoulder covering half of her face. She came closer and swept her hair back with her hand. I just glazed, not knowing what to think or to say. Half her face was gone. It was literally gone, melted away. No eye, no eyebrow, no cheek, no form of anything. She said, ‘while we were on holiday I was walking through the street with my mum to get ice-cream and there was a guy on a ladder holding a bucket, this girl suddenly ran past me and hit my shoulder and I fell backwards onto the ladder and the bucket fell down. It fell on my face. It was acid. Why that guy was holding a bucket full of acid I don’t know, all I know is it fell on my face and here I am now’. I was still just gazing. She didn’t even cry, she was so calm about it. I grabbed her hand, she was surprised, I held it up across my chest where my heart was and I said ‘you feel that? that’s my heart beating one million times more than normal, for you, for the worry that you were going to leave me and I couldn’t understand why, but now I do Violet. If you think a scar is going to make me stop loving you, you’re wrong. I still love you’, she jumped on me and hugged me so tight, I could feel her heart beating near mine. And she said ‘Rob, why? Why do you still accept me and love me after what I look like now?’ and I just said ‘because when you fall in love with someone that means you love them, I forgot what you looked like a long time ago, and that’s when I fell in love with you’ she replied ‘I love you so much’. And there she was, Violet, the woman I love.