To You … With Love,

The negatives of the old photographs lay in the yellowing envelope. I found them clinging together, as if something had bonded them there. Carefully lifting them out, separating them, and holding them before the light, my eyes strained to bring the blurred shapes and forms into focus.

Soon, life began emerging within the ghostly shadows of imprinted time, as I wandered into a gay day of laughter mingling into the wind, flinging handfuls of happiness across the lights. As the spirits of the images raced through the purple shadows toward the light, joy cut into the twilight areas of the mind, where children still dance, loved ones picnic in the joy of living, and graying dreams of two young souls in love run barefoot in the soul. Thus, another anniversary comes into focus, leaving the frayed edge of its memory to be trimmed again for sealing up into the envelope of the heart. And to the memory I cry, Happy Anniversary, Darling.

Rev. Richardson (ret.)