Shuffling the Deck

The photograph fell. Or you dropped it. 1987, maybe '88. The corners are soft now, like your grandmother’s hands the last time you held them.

You remember the dress being blue. It was green. Memory is a liar that means well, a translator who improvises when the original text smudges.

The stranger in the background—you’ve invented his life story seven different ways. He’s always smoking. He never existed. He’s become more real than some people you’ve actually met.

Your mother’s laugh in that moment: you can’t recall the sound, only the fact that you miss it. That’s worse, somehow. The ghost of a feeling without the feeling itself.

Flip the image. Someone wrote “Sunday?” in pencil. The question mark says everything. The uncertainty is more honest than any date.

Time doesn’t fade photographs. It rearranges them. Shuffles the deck. Deals you a hand where some cards are blank and others are on fire and you can’t tell which is which anymore.

You keep it in a box now. Not for the memory. For the gaps between what you see and what you know. That’s where the real photograph is. Still developing. Still refusing to explain itself.