The old photograph I look at has eyes staring back at me. They’re happy — smiling so selflessly as our bodies cling onto one another. Hand to waist, waists in hand. The picture is frozen. Stuck in the moment where no one else can tear it apart into an infinite amount of pieces. There is no motion or force to move us away from each other -- away from the smiles, the happiness, and the memories. Not even gravity takes force on this picture.
The old photograph is stuck in time. Not only in mind, but in my heart. I can hold it up above my head and let the sun beam down upon it, and I’d still be locked in the glare of your eyes, crystal blue like the sky. It's funny how calm and steady a picture can make everything seem, even when it's not.
The old photograph is just a picture. It doesn’t show progress, strength, or all the struggles we’ve been through. It’s just a picture -- but it does so much. Pictures are worth a thousand words, so they say. But these words are more than just words, because when you combine words together, you give them meaning, and that's what we're fighting for.
The old photograph I’m staring at is two strangers combining their lives together to make a meaning -- to make sense out of everything in this world that doesn’t make sense to them. In this picture you can’t see the struggles, or the fighting, or the means behind any of our problems. You just see us, smiling in a still moment when our crazy lives are hidden by the snap of a camera.
This picture reminds me of summer with you -- being together all by ourselves. The sun kissing my skin and smacking yours with a violent red burn that I found hilarious, even though it must’ve hurt.
But every day we were as if we were the ocean. So calm on the surface, hearing the waves gradually crash onto the shoreline, making designs in the wet sand from where the water had begun to dry.
As beautiful as it was, no one could see the riptide. That underneath the surface was a forceful pull that could make you seem weightless with its strong grip, the rough waters eroding away at the sand underneath the waves bit by bit. That was us. We were fighting for strength to rise from the force of conflict that was pulling us under.
Every time we were sucked back underneath, we managed to swim up to the top for air. You held me up to take that breath, and we worked side by side to keep each other together. But somehow the forces underneath us began to gain even more power, and it got harder to swim to the top.
In the picture I’m looking at, I remember every breath of fresh air. Holding it in deeply, unwilling to exhale in case I sunk to the bottom again -- and I did. I sunk a couple of times without you helping me back up. But I still fought for it, because I’d do anything to keep us alive.
The old photograph is meaning. We may not smile the same or as brightly as we did that day, but we still smile. Our bodies still cling side by side to one another, although in a different surrounding. But this photograph will remain stagnant. I cannot change the composition of it, the angle it was taken in, the clothes we were wearing -- nothing.
This old photograph holds a place in my heart. It makes me anxiously wait for the day when we break away from the riptide and come out of the deep waters hand-in-hand. Maybe someday we can stop savoring our last bit of air, and we'll be able to exhale freely without caution. I hope someday, someone can capture a picture of that.
