a strange little miracle

i have always thought
a photograph is a strange little miracle

the way light
touches a thing
and says

stay.

your hand in mine
your head thrown back laughing
the afternoon caught
in your hair

all of it already leaving
even as the shutter clicks

and still

there you are.

perhaps that is what love is too—

not stopping time
(no one has ever been that lucky)

but noticing it

noticing
the coffee going cold between us
the wrinkle beginning beside your eye
the way your fingers find mine
without looking

the ordinary holiness
of being here
at the same time.

years from now
someone may hold this photograph
by its edges

and see two people
standing in sunlight

but i will remember
what the picture cannot:

what you said just before
i laughed

how warm your shoulder was

the tiny breath
between looking at you
and knowing

oh.

it is you.

it has been you.

and maybe photographs
were never meant
to make anything last

maybe they are only proof

that for one impossible second
time opened its hands

and there we were—

loving each other

while the light
was still
on us.