A Woman’s Intuition

It’s graininess gives away it’s age, just as the hairstyles in it do. It is from a time before “selfies” and cell phones. It is from a time when our every moment was not captured on camera, a time when photographs cost you time and money.

In it I am sitting, facing down and to my right. I am smiling, but it is an uncertain smile, a “what am I getting into” smile? I have been hurt before, and am wary.

She is facing me from my right, her back to the camera, leaning in to me as though to kiss, so that you see her profile. Her smile is golden, confidant, it harbors no doubts. Her hand is on my chest, on my heart, where it belongs. She too has been hurt, but she is unafraid to jump back in. She has tested the water’s depths and has found them less fearful when swimming with a loved one than it is floundering alone on the land. It was the reason I stayed, I think, her confidence in me... that I was the one. She was always so sure.

The picture has the look of a very personal moment, so I wonder who was there to take it? I cannot remember. She probably does. She remembers all of our moments together.

We look so young on glossy cardboard, like kids. If I could have known then what I know now, I would have looked at her with that same confidence that she exuded, and I wonder how she knew, how she saw all of the happiness that was coming? How could she have been so sure of the life that was coming?