Kodak Paper for a Better Look

The utility closet was always
in the garage. Lined with thin,
four-inch shelves holding jars
of bread-n-butter pickles, or canned
green beans. Lint from the clothes
dryer thicked over the inverted yellow
boxtops from Kodak paper. You see,
my father was a photo-
journalist for many years.

He filled these boxes with hundreds
of pictures. Wrecks, politicians, the ladies'
clubs, winners. No order. Maybe the years
were close, maybe not.

Sometimes we flip through
them, tossing out, burning up, more history
than most will ever remember. Once I found
a picture of a woman
decapitated in an accident on US 13. I didn't
know her, I don't think, and that time I watched
as the fire curled the edges of the grey moment.
I didn't look away until she was gone.

-1987 Kevin H. Souza