IN REGARDING A PHOTOGRAPH

In her, the qualities of what makes the sun rise each morning, what makes men slay dragons and sing in bright bursts of off-kilter melody, and take to the land, invested, that she may stay. Her skin, golden and glowing, playing with the light around her, reflecting, absorbing, luminescent, soft, sweet. The gentle, full curves of her body, kind hands, the grace in the way she sits, unstudied. Her face! There would never be enough days in a lifetime to tire of it, never enough days not to be so lost in it, lovesick, heart burning, beating, bringing the messy perfection of this in him: lust, longing, his home, in her.

In their child, a baby girl who balances on his wife’s lap in a flowered dress that nearly reaches to her tiny ankles, his sadness in her eyes, passed on, which no other can ever really change for good.