If Objects Could Speak: The Forgotten Photograph

the flash that made me was on 08/09/1988 last week we heard the story of a lottery ticket a slip of paper holding hope and heartbreak i hold a different kind of treasure a single unrepeatable second one moment there was nothing the next i held them his arm around her shoulder her head tilted just so they were laughing at something someone off camera said for years that was my world the slick protective plastic of an album page the soft sound of pages turning

their fingers would trace their own younger faces i was proof albums grow heavy they get put into boxes boxes go into attics i remember the smell of cedar and dust i remember the sound of their voices muffled from downstairs first a duet the arguments the reconciliations the years of quiet partnership then a solo just his voice slower softer i felt the house settle around its new silence the box was moved after he was gone i must have slipped out then i fell between a stack of old newspapers on the wall landing face down in the dark for decades that was my world darkness the faint scent of decaying newsprint the scuttling of mice i felt the seasons change the damp cold of winter seeping through

the floor the heavy humid stillness of summer i heard the low of a new family's life through the plaster their joys were vibrations their sorrows were a weight in the air i couldn't see them but i could feel their time passing birthdays holidays a teenager's loud music vibrating through the wood i was no longer proof of anything i was just paper a forgotten thought then a new sound ripping tearing the sound of renovation a crowbar splintered the wall i leaned against and the light oh the light was blinding a hand calloused and smudged with plaster picked me up a young woman's face squinted at me she didn't know them

she turned me over looking for a name a date finding nothing i thought this is it the end the trash bin a final fading but she didn't throw me away she wiped the dust from my surface with her thumb very gently she saw them not as her grandparents or her history but just as two people young and in love on a forgotten summer day she saw the story not the memory

she saw a truth that didn't need a name now i sit on a mantelpiece i'm tucked into the corner of a new frame next to pictures of children i don't know whose laughter now fills these rooms the young woman sometimes looks at me when she passes a small smile she's not remembering them she can't she's remembering that love exists that it's a thing that can be held in a single second that its ghost can linger in a house for fifty years i am no longer their private memory i am a memory of memory itself a small anchor to a past that belongs to everyone now and to no one

and from here in the warm evening light i watch a new life unfold one flash at a time