What was the point in staring at your photo?
What had I to gain from it?
Mesmerized and chained to the wall
Bent into a crouch by circumstance and the cruel
Hand of Fate
It was all I had of you
A powerful talisman that just as often cursed
As blessed
For the miles between us were many
And the distance even further
Even if I could have broken a hole in the separating wall
I wouldn't have been able to cross that span
I was too weak and still reeling from realizing it
But I had that picture
A tiny, wrinkled scrap of paper to confirm
That the image in my mind was no dream
Even as time threatened to convince me
Even as time reminded me of change and all it threatened to do
The visage trapped in Kodachrome
Was immune to it
All the while you grew and morphed ever so slightly
Into the almost unrecognizable woman
I came back to
My absence having dragged you down
Into an unfamiliar reality you'd never known existed
Your fear that everything we'd built together, every dream shared
Were for nothing, with nothing to show
It may have been a glimpse of the separation
Impending while hidden, awaiting the proper moment
Just a peek, unbidden, that transformed you
Made you even more beautiful, made you all the more dangerous
Made you open your eyes to what had to be done
The same pool-deep eyes I stared at during that hard time
So intent that they seemed to move
An optical illusion tricked me into believing
Everything would be just fine when we came together again
Fooled me into thinking we would ever be the same
I had grown to expect the angel
Smiling at me from the photo
Becoming more beautiful each time I took it from my wallet
Farther away every time I stuffed it back in

No longer miles, but years neither of us care to cross anymore
No longer distance, but tears that tore us asunder
I don't even have the picture anymore, as if I still wanted it
As if I could still bear to look at it without shuddering

Wondering how I could ever have thought you were my other half
It would only serve to remind me that you were never mine at all
And if all I could have of you is this picture
No matter that it saved my life
I'd rather feed it to the fire

*****************

She had been gone for a couple of months when I found an old shoe box
Into which I crammed every letter she wrote me in days apart
One for every day of the week, six months worth of reminders
She loved me. She missed me. She could not wait until I came home.
(Oh, now I chastise myself for not even remembering what her handwriting looked like)
I stuck them in that Nike box along with our marriage certificate
I drove across town and gave it to her mother
She would pass it
Along
A long regretted final gesture of acceptance
Where, hidden in a random envelope that my love would probably never open,
I had tucked in the photograph
For her to burn