Forgotten Photo

by Carolyn Chilton Casas

Image credit: Fernando Lavin on Unsplash

from twenty years past, taken

on a foreign beach. 

You’re standing thigh-deep

in an aqua sea, looking back

toward the camera,

mask and snorkel dangling

from your forehead,

wearing a flowered, two-piece

bathing suit and a few extra pounds 

from living that good life.

I look into your eyes, think

this is innocence, the calm

before your world imploded—

father found dead in his easy chair;

the blip revealed

on your husband’s routine tests;

a dear friend’s plane crashed

into a mountain peak in Baja;

and your mother ill,

on the brink of dying.

The constant decision present

in the sanctuary of your heart—

retreat in fear and sadness

or listen to the rising sense

that tells you compassion shown

to others will be the only

trustworthy way to soothe the sorrow.

Only I know what you chose.

It makes me ache

to hold you in my arms, say thank you

for the woman I’ve become.

***

Carolyn Chilton Casas

Carolyn Chilton Casas is a Reiki master and teacher who often explores ways of healing in her articles written for magazines in several countries. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies including The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace and Renewal. More of Carolyn’s work can be found on Facebook or Instagram, in her poetry collection Our Shared Breath, and in the forthcoming book Under the Same Sky.