Pictures of Strangers

We're moving houses again.

Boxes litter the living room. Weak sunlight gleams through dusty windows. I can hear my sisters somewhere deeper in the house; they sound faraway, like whispers from a dream, forgotten. On my wrist, I can feel time tick-tocking away from my watch's hands.

I sit on the wooden floorboard. I have an album from childhood in my hands. I cradle it like a child.

Reverently, I open the thick album. It doesn't creak, but I can almost hear its sigh of relief, a big stretch after a long time of being idle. A puff of dust billows into the air.

The people in the pictures are unfamiliar to me - they must have been taken when I was still unborn. There are photos of who could've been my mother's college friends, or perhaps my father's colleagues from the military, or maybe even distant relatives that I've never met.

I touch these strange faces. My fingertip leaves a visible trail, clearing the years from their cheeks. They're all mid-laugh, faces scrunched in happiness, smiles wide, teeth bared. Some of them strike a pose; some of them don't seem to notice the camera.

Although I've never met them, never heard them laugh, I had the most poignant feeling that I've known these people all my life. That, from my touch, these half-dead, half-living figures come to life. As if I'm the god that electrocutes rhythm into them.

I wonder then if they are as soft and malleable in life as they are here in the pictures. I wonder where they are now as I pack my past again; are they on the other side of the world? Are they waiting for the train, shivering against the morning cold? Are they perhaps wandering inside their homes, opening an old photo album, and experiencing that significant ache for all that was and all that will never be? Or maybe they are dead, worm-eaten, embraced by the dirt.

I sift through. One page and then another.

I find a younger version of my mother. She looks a lot like my sister - they share the same eyes and smile. Only now does it strike me how similar they are. In birthing my sister, my mother has rebirthed herself. Are we all just stitched-up parts of our ancestors then? A glorious progeny, a line of repeating lives, relived and then forgotten.

I linger on each page, a gnawing guilt building in me.

When I leave these people, is it an act of betrayal? Is my abandoning of these quiet, dusty lives an end to an end? Is my leaving a testament to the insignificance of each person stuck there? I have such a notion that I am desanctifying some infinitely suffering thing by plunging each frame into darkness once again. An anti-genesis. Finite Death.

Once I am older and my pictures are in homes I've never been to, would the wear of time on those be, somehow, felt by my sinews and bones? Will the unremembrance, the crowding pages - will they reach across the threads of the world and realign my flesh?

Suddenly plagued by fear, I try to memorise each person. A man's crooked smile. A dimple. A mole. A receding hairline. A baby's plumped hands. A woman's dark hair pulled into a bun. A strawberry swimsuit. A pair of crescent eyes. A blurry hand. An open mouth. A bag slung haplessly over someone's shoulder. A gap between teeth. A bent neck over a book. A tongue sticking out. A bare arm over a car window that's rolled down. A blue shirt running after a dog. A ringed finger. A peace sign underwater...

I take all these in and try to hold on to them; try to create a new fold in my brain where these figures can be imprinted, never fading, never gone. For I know there will come a day when this fraying album will be misplaced and I will never see it again. And I won't even notice. No one will. Maybe only the people inside will feel it, a life tossed into a sea of everything nil. One of their first deaths.

That day will come, as inevitable as the passing of the sun.

I pray that Time has been kind to these people. I pray that someone will find pictures of me and pray for me as well. Wherever or whenever that may be.

I close the album. The sun has left the blanket of sky. There's dinner being prepared, I can smell it. In another room, I hear the faint laughter of my sisters.

I get up, put the album in a box, stretch my sore limbs. I head towards the kitchen. I help set the table.

Already, Forgetfulness nips at my mind.

Written by Josephyn M.

Everything I write comes from the child that never left my skull. We hope our work reaches the child inside your skull and makes them taste the bittersweetness of the world.