This is a photograph of being in love.

It’s a picture of a feeling in a moment.

It’s a record of a time when the whole world came alive.

I took it from inside a girl’s convertible.

She came and picked me up and she drove me around. Somewhere along the way the top came down. I remember looking over and seeing her smiling.

It was about the best thing of all time.

A whole lot happened in the years before this photo. And a whole lot has happened since. I’m not saying that this was the greatest moment of my life. But if I had to pick one to live in, it’d be this.

I don’t even know where this photo was taken. Where we were then in space or time. At this point I was just snapping photos upward, blind. Of the buildings, the lights, the sky.

I don’t know if that’s a wall there or if it’s a bus. I don’t know if we’re in a tunnel or if that’s a streetlight.

Out of frame, she’s beside me and our future is ahead.

Or at least, so it seemed at the time.

I don’t think I’d ever been in a convertible before, except my grandma’s when I was young and the top stayed up. I don’t know how come it took so long for me to get inside one.

I don’t know when the next will come along.

The idea is to describe this photo in a thousand words. But I’m stopping here at a quarter that. There’s no way to go on; that’s the problem with a photograph:

You can stop time, but you can’t bring the future back.

.

7/24/09
4:45 am

TAGS: Being Driven Around, Ben Loory, the Future, The Past

BEN LOORY lives in Los Angeles, in a house on top of a hill. His fables and tales have appeared in Barrelhouse, Wigleaf, Space & Time, Vestal Review, Knock, and more. His book Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day is currently seeking a home. He can be found at the Pasadena Chipotle most weeknights around 8/8:30.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 25th, 2009 at 1:53 am and is filed under Nonfiction, Thousand Words. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.