Photograph

"It's just a moment in time you can't have back."
-Guy Clark

That's a picture of me.

It was taken a long time ago.

 I forget exactly how long.

I wrote about this picture a while ago, and I'm going to share what I wrote here today:

I have this one picture of me where I look like a ghost.

Every time I look at it, that's what I think.  

I'm young in the picture, late twenties, maybe.

Andy took it.  We'd went to this place in Kentucky that he'd found.  There was this hole-in-the-wall diner that had a huge billboard you could see from the highway.  The billboard was almost as big as the diner, I swear. "Home of the Smashburger".  And so we drove up there one day to find out what exactly a Smashburger was and we walked around this small Kentucky town.

It must have been in the fall of the year, close to winter perhaps, because I'm wearing a sweater, even though the sun is shining.  I've never been a cold-natured person; my blood has always run hot to the point of excess.  So that's how I know it must have been a cold, clear day.

Sometimes when I look at the picture long enough, I can feel that cold creeping into my fingertips and my ears and the end of my nose.  It's a silly feeling, but it's there just the same, this distant memory of freezing.  The frigid tingling of skin has always made me feel slightly more alive.  I don't think I could tell you why exactly, though I've pondered over it many times, only that it does.

I don't know that it's a picture of me, really, even though I'm in it.  Or, I suppose it may be, just shot artistically.  I'm in the bottom right of the photo, in focus and smiling at the camera.  Behind me, encompassing the majority of the photo, a bridge blurs out into trees and mountain and sky.  It's a wide wooden footbridge that crosses a small stream.  Where it leads, I can't recall, or where it came from, only that it seemed to be longer and wider than it needed to be.  In truth, you could see the highway from the end of the bridge where I stood, but you can't tell that in the photo.  Instead it seems that the bridge goes on for miles and miles, leading to the mountains in the far distance.  As I said, it's quite artistic.

Andy used to take pictures of me that way, a long time ago.  In recent years, he delights in taking pictures of me only when I'm in the middle of talking, so that I'm always making a goofy face.  I don't know when it changed.  That's what happens over time, I suppose.  Little things change, so slowly you don't even notice, but you look back when you must and suddenly it's all different and maybe you wonder how it came to be that way, but you'll never figure it out.  The answer is lost to time.

I wonder if he used to think I was pretty and wanted to savor that on film, but as I aged he saw less of that, or it became less important and instead he started capturing the way I made him feel, or maybe the way he wants to feel, laughing at a stupid face.  Maybe that's a compliment, to make someone laugh, to have that be preferred over beauty.  Or maybe the traces of beauty are gone now and all that remains is personality as a consolation prize.  I don't know if I should be flattered or offended, but I wouldn't mind a few shots of beauty, if there are any vestiges of it left to be seen.

But I am pretty in this picture, I think.  Not beautiful, but pretty.  I think if I had been beautiful, a person might say I look like an angel in the photo, come to guide you to heaven, light and serene.  I've never been beautiful.  And that must be why I think I look like a ghost, because I am no angel, and though the photo makes me look ethereal, it is in a familiar way.  I'm an old friend who's been waiting for you to come for some time, patiently, and now you're here and we'll walk together to whatever comes next.  That's better, I think sometimes, isn't it?  A pretty, friendly face, instead of an achingly beautiful cold one?

I don't think I ever felt pretty, even when this picture was taken.  The truth escapes us when the moment is fresh.  It's hard to see and even harder to believe.  But I'm not the girl in the photo anymore.  I wish I could be as pretty as I was then.  

But you've been gone for some time now and I'm tired of waiting.  You can see the time on my face.  The years have not been kind.  Can you tell how long I've been missing you?