When a Photo Blinked

I didn’t plan to cry today. It was just a regular day, one of those quiet ones where you move through your home not really thinking about anything important. I had my phone in my hand, like always, just scrolling—maybe looking for something, maybe just passing time. I wasn’t even sure if I was going to eat. Maybe I meant to. Maybe I forgot.

That’s how it happens sometimes. You don’t expect anything. You’re just there, in the middle of your day, doing ordinary things.

Then I saw the app again. CapCut. You might know it—it’s one of those video editing apps with templates. There’s a particular one that keeps showing up in people’s posts. You upload a photo, and it makes the face in the picture move. The eyes blink. The lips shift slightly, almost like the person is about to say something. It’s strange. It’s beautiful. It feels a little like magic. And a little like something we’re not supposed to do.

Still, I tried it.

I chose a photo of my dad. Not one where he was younger or posed. Just a simple one. A photo that really looked like him. The him I remember. The one I still talk to in my head sometimes. In that photo, he looked still. Quiet. Peaceful.

And then, he blinked.

His face moved in a way I hadn’t seen in so long. Just a little twitch at the corner of his mouth—like he was about to speak. Like he might say my name. I watched it over and over again. Too many times. I couldn’t look away, even when I knew it wasn’t real.

At some point, I stopped the video. I didn’t let it finish. Toward the end, his face started changing. Not enough to be obvious at first, but enough that it no longer looked quite like him. It became something else. Someone else. Borrowed. Almost like the memory was being rewritten by the app. That’s when I paused it.

I kept the part that looked the most like him. The part where, for just a moment, it felt like he came back to life.

It wasn’t perfect. But it was close enough.

Close enough to hurt.

And that’s when I cried. Not the kind of crying you see in movies—no loud sobbing or dramatic music. Just quiet tears that came on their own. I didn’t even know I was crying until I felt the wetness on my cheeks. My body knew before my mind did. I had to sit down. Right there on the floor. I stayed there for a while, not thinking, not doing anything. Just sitting with the weight of it all.

In the corner of the room, I felt something.

Not saw—felt.

You know that weird feeling, like you’re being watched? I turned my head slowly, and there it was. A spider. Still. Silent. Just waiting in the corner like it always does. I didn’t scream. I didn’t move to kill it. It was just... there. Like everything else. Quiet company.

The hallway around me was still. The phone had gone black in my hand. I hadn’t even noticed. I was standing in a strange place—somewhere between one breath and the next. Between the memory of a man who’s no longer here and the imitation of him made by a machine.

It felt like time paused for a moment.

Something might’ve been burning in the kitchen, or maybe I just imagined it. Maybe I was supposed to cook something. Maybe I wasn’t. Maybe I had forgotten why I walked in there in the first place.

That’s how grief works sometimes. It sneaks in on days when nothing is wrong. It finds you in the soft spots—when you’re scrolling your phone, or walking from one room to another, or standing still for no reason at all. You don’t need a big event or a special date. It just shows up.

And sometimes, it comes through blinking eyes on a screen. Through the twitch of a mouth that once called your name. Through the memory of someone who mattered.

And in that quiet moment, you remember that love doesn’t leave. It just changes form. Sometimes, it lives in a photo. Sometimes, in tears you didn’t expect. Sometimes, in silence.

And sometimes, it lives in the space between one breath and the next.