Antique Couple

I love those old photos of couples you find in random places. The ones tucked inside books or in a stack of papers? The ones in peoples' attics from a previous owner that seem to defy their absence and remain in their domicile resting place. The ones where you don't know the couple in it; but you see the love it captures. Him and her smiling as they tromp through the snow. Or decorate the Christmas tree. Their first Valentine's Day. The ones that tell a whole story in one look, but retain their anonymity. It always makes me feel good to know something good has happened here before. That someone was in love at some point. 

That's what we are in my mind. When I said "of course" that October night we took a mental picture together. It used to change everyday. Sometimes it was the image of a crisp fall night walk and the smell of cigars. Sometimes it was the third floor of that building where we finally were free. Or that night in the common room I will never forget (and the words that followed it). Always different. But always from the good era. While we were trying I kept the photo in tact; editing, printing, and framing it. Dusting it everyday so as not to forget or grow dim. 

This week has been the first in months I haven't dusted the frame. Some days it was on purpose. Some were just overshadowed or forgotten. Ultimately this choice was right. Today the mental image I have is the night on the couches. My hand in yours. Our conversation had stretched on that day; it seemed to go on forever. I will always remember how I told you... " At the risk of making things awkward I have to say..." It was one of my few and first shows of courage, small as it was. You did not disappoint; reassuring me that you felt the same, taking your hand and curling it around mine that was a fraction of the size. It was the walk that turned into a conversation. A conversation that had turned into a long talk, leading us to seating ourselves on student couches in lounges. It was a long talk that turned into confessions. Confessions that turned into a relationship. A relationship that turned into love. Love that faded into history.

That image is our mental picture today. No matter the image, however, they all do the same things. As time wears on and "we" slip farther and farther from the present or our feelings, our picture fades. It loses its colour with age and the edges starts tearing. It crinkles and cracks with wear, and the tone inches closer and closer to the sepia that means the past. Before I know it, I look at us. There is my hand in yours, forever captured in the aged reminder. It makes me feel better to know that we are here, and that time immortalized briefly in the footnotes of human history. I don't want it to burst back into colour or renewed quality. I just like having the photo to know it happened. To prove that I'm still here. To prove I'm alive. I ponder leaving it behind somewhere for others to find someday. But I decide not to. It goes in the photo album of the past next to the others like it. They're all faded, cracked, worn, and experienced. But they all look different too. One is a a pack of gum in my hand with a sweet message emblazoned on it. One is a sweet boy with brown hair hiding behind a flower. One is a first dance at prom. This is the last one I will add to the album for a long time. 

There is only one saved from age. It is a man in a stage cape, with those amazing brown eyes and the sun in his smile.He and I are talking in it. This is my favourite. This is the one I've been waiting to be a part of since the day this was taken. Every time I look at it it seems as if he's smiling and laughing with me. In it I see past, present, and future so perfectly mixed, it is omni-present. He is everywhere. He always has been. This is the picture I will leave behind someday. This one will never fade. This one will last. This one means everything. We will be that antique couple someday. The one whose picture you smile at decades after it was taken; recognizing their radiant love through the representative photographic proof you have stumbled across. Not even time itself can dim their light; their lives together; their love.