GHOST IMAGE

 

My daughter unearths it from a stack of yellowing papers on the desk, that silly photo booth image of her parents, younger, turning to kiss; still half smiling, as the shutter clicks them permanently into the cool black and white usually reserved for historic artifacts, or great-grandparents, offering barely a passing glance at their secret worlds. It is the color of distance, and unforgiving detail. She laughs, holding it up to the light, someone's looping handwriting showing through the other side; looks at me, as if for explanation. I ask what she thinks, if it's funny to see her parents -- rarely in the same room for most of her life -- touching this way. "I like it," she says matter-of-factly. "But it's a ghost picture." I nod, and we both go back to whatever it was we were doing only a moment before.