Photograph

  by M. Thomas Goecke

     When I cleaned off an overloaded bookcase to paint the wall I found an old photograph of you.  It had fallen behind a shelf and its corner cracked when I flattened it out on my desk.  I touched your face with the tips of my fingers as if I could feel your cheek, then held the paper to my lips for a moment.  It’s funny how clearly I remember that day after almost twenty years.  You were driving the maroon Monaco toward Log Lake and we had already pulled two cold ones from the cooler in the backseat, the radio playing loud and all the windows down.  You turned toward me and the camera froze the honey colored hair snapping around your face, your lips pursed with the words to Jackson Brown’s Running on Empty.  You were fearless, the kind of girl that would take candy from strangers and run with scissors.  And that summer, the summer before we left for different colleges, I felt fearless with you.

     I can almost smell the scent of that old car, a musty combination of leather seats and mildew from a tiny leak above the windshield that even a jagged and finger smeared line of brown caulk could not stop.  That ’68 Dodge was the size of an ocean liner, but the money from our summer jobs, trimming Christmas trees, kept enough gas in it to take us to the lake evenings after work.  We usually stopped for a six-pack, bought with your fake I.D., and two burger baskets from Jackie’s Diner.  After eating, we would stand in the bushes to change for a swim and you always made me promise not to peek.  Most evenings ended with us sitting on the hood, leaning back on the windshield, studying the sky.  We always had more wishes than stars.

     The first time we made love was in the back of that car.  Your mouth tasted like beer and watermelon Jolly Rancher.  I was inexperienced, fumbling the condom, but your cool hands on my shoulders urged me down over you.  “It’s alright,” you whispered, “it’s alright.” I finished too quickly, and embarrassed, pressed my face to your shoulder, your fingers traced the outline of my ear as my breathing slowed. 

     Our last lovemaking was also in that car.  By then, you had choreographed my graceless hunching into a rhythmic violence that left us giddy.  By then, I realized when Keats wrote “full beautiful,” he meant you.  By then, I knew I loved you because you made it easier for me to love myself.  After, we tugged our swimsuits back into place and ran, hand in hand, toward the lake, its water shattered like crystal upon our entry, the ripples dispersing your reflection, like a photograph seen through tears.