interrupted.

The still-picture photograph of someone’s greatest moment better than his left him empty. The real-colored fullness of their smiling faces, the baby’s captured laughter, or the dark sunglasses in front of a mountain range made him feel black and white on the inside. Flipping through the stacks of images, trying to hold on with fingers numbed from the sidewalk wind that pushed summer out with the light, he caught corners of people’s eyes, the flash of a red balloon, a happy dog and a baseball game. Warmth in his hands, death on his eyes. I think too slowly or thought too late, never got inside the lives they live. Three kids ran down the broken concrete, one nearly brushed him with his backpack that bounced back and forth to hard footfalls. He watched them run down the street until they ran past a gray building that drew his eyes to the dusty clouds in the purple red sky. Another one of life’s snags jerking him away from the memories in his lap.