Dimmed Sunlight. Top Story - June 2025.
I keep her pictures in what Generation Alpha would see as a vintage box but I know it is from Old Navy; and holds that smells of old chapstick and age. Photos on all four sides of the box of memories on developed Polaroids slipped in. Lift the top and there she is, frozen at thirty-eight, laughing like a brass bell in a summer parade. In every shot her shoulders are square, spine fluid like a proud river, hands mid-air as though the punchline has just landed and she’s gifting the air back to the world. She looks at the camera the way sunflowers look at the sun with a guaranteed certainty that it will rise again.