The Photograph

              When I was very young, I was always very intrigued by photographs.  I would see the frozen faces pasted on a piece of paper and rush to make sure that their owners still had possession of them.  I also couldn’t understand how everyone wasn’t stuck in a moment in time stopped by a blinding flash of light.  None of it ever made much sense to me then.  For years I would run away and hide whenever my mother proposed a photo op.  I eventually grasped the illusory fact that photographs wouldn’t do all of those horrible things to me.
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         I turn toward the box and let my world weary eyes rest on its ornate ebony designs.  I can’t tear myself away…
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         As crazy as my childhood thoughts about photographs sound, I’m not alone.  I’ve definitely heard somewhere that people in other parts of the world believe that a camera captures your soul when it takes your picture.  The more I think about it, the realer it sounds.  Do you really know what a photograph truly is?  Now I see it is an image, a moment in time that has captured a part of you so that you can never truly be whole again.  Of course you may not notice at first – that part of you may be small.  But still, when you sit at home alone and look at all the faces and moments, so MANY of them, you must feel the hollowness, the loneliness.
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         …I place my palms onto the box and feel the turmoil, anguish, love, anger, hate, sorrow, fear and more whirling around inside…
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         But as for me, one photograph has captured my all.  I walk around like a machine, smiling, joking, working, talking, and going through the motions.  But I’m like the Tin Man – there’s nothing left inside.  No feelings.
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         …My fingers slide back the latch and the box opens.  There, all alone at the dusty bottom, lies a faded photograph…
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         I couldn’t believe it when I saw it:  my eyes refused to believe.  How could such a life be wiped out in a single chaotic moment?  How could someone I loved even more than life itself simply disappear from my world?  How could – the questions kept coming and coming and I could never find the answers.
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         …My pale trembling fingers reach into the depths of the box, carefully prying it off the bottom and blowing gently to remove the dust…
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         I can’t explain how much I hurt inside.  Perhaps it felt akin to having your heart crudely and abruptly torn from your chest and all you can do is place your hand in the empty hole and remember what had been a part of you.  Or perhaps it was like being left, alone, in the middle of a blizzard in the cold with no one in the world to even offer a word.  But I think it was most like just being cut off from absolutely everything in the world, watching everyone run around and go through life with ease while you stand alone on the sidewalk, just watching, never being a part of it all.  Over the years, you get used to the abyss inside you and you become numb to everything.  That’s what I did.
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         …My eyes feast on its familiarity.  How many times must I have looked at this old photograph?  I knew every detail from the crunched up metal of the ’92 Chevy Impala, silver, to the broken body dangling gawkily out of the driver’s seat drenched in crimson blood.  The EMTs slouch around awkwardly, knowing their inability to help the victim, and I stand in the background, blurry, shielding my face from the intrusive camera…
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         So here I am, years and years later, still stuck in that moment.  I start to shudder suddenly and momentarily I convulse in anguished sobs that shake my entire body.  My head feels full to bursting with emotions, memories, voices, and images all whirling around the one I love. 
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                …I fall to my knees because they can’t support me anymore.  Everything is blurry and distorted and I am sprawled on the ground, yet I still support the photograph reverently in my fingers.  But suddenly my legs move with minds of their own and my stricken body picks itself up and staggers across the empty room to the fireplace, where I lit a fire to try and warm the deathly chill that seeps into this dreary place.  Soundlessly, the photograph gently slides from my fingers into the crackling inferno…
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                I never wanted any of it to happen to me.  I never asked for any of this.  But maybe things don’t have to be quite the way they’ve been for me all these years.  Is it time for me to pick up the shattered parts and get out the extra-strength glue?
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                …I watch the greedy flames lick the glossy image as it recoils onto itself and crumples and contorts.  Something’s happening inside me – coils within coils untangling, years and years of wrangled feelings unwinding.  The last shreds of the photograph dissolve into ash the heat makes my eyes burn.  My eyes cool of my cheeks and I can feel something unfurling its wings where my heart used to be and I begin to laugh.