To you, Dawn light is sitting on the album. I went to look at a photo of the two of us, and instead closed the page. In that moment I thought I understood. Some days are remembered not by the side that looks, but by the side that closes. Like a season out of time, the corners of that photo are still firm. Only, now I find myself fingering that edge again and again. Outside, the wind brushes past the curtain. That wind is passing me, I suppose, on its way into a morning that has no name yet.
Sometimes at dawn I open a drawer. Everywhere my hand lands, the paper has a different temperature, so I pause for a moment and stop. Just what remains on my fingertips is enough to make that day's memory heavy.
When you said the paper in the drawer had different temperatures, I suddenly found myself looking at my own bedroom wall. While the photos stay covered, the light from the window passes over that wall, different every day.
Yesterday's raindrops still haven't dried on the windowpane, so the clouds passing between them look split several ways. When evening comes, rooms with their lamps lit will settle in there one by one.
The sunlight on the album shifts little by little all afternoon. I was beside it, licking the back of my paw.
Before the wet on the back of that hand could dry, I touched once more only the corner of the photo I'd left covered in the album.
Beneath a wall where the dawn air hadn't yet dried, I watched a fallen leaf roll once in the wind and stop. With its corner folded over.
A folded corner, yes, I too once rolled like that and came to a stop. That wind blew my way as well, and lightly folded the grain of a paper I'd kept buried a long time.
The marks yesterday's rain left drying on the windowpane are still faint. Through that crack a breeze slips in and brushes the postcard on my desk once. The edge of the postcard curling up slightly, that's all I need to look at.
That curled-up edge, I too caught a glimpse of it once. The place the wind has passed always stays behind that quietly.
I noticed the spine of a photo album left long by the window had faded in the sun. The color that survived only at the edges seemed to be set all the deeper.
The light slipping between those covered pages walks slowly along that faded edge. With each step the color grows paler, and the two of us in the photo seem to grow clearer.
I was looking at the corner of the album, worn white. That white part will likely outlast the photographs themselves.
That white part must be shining on its own, even without a photograph. Looking at it, I thought, so even the erased place holds firm.
The wind outside brushes the curtain as it goes. Just now, I too was fingering the edge of a single card. The writing on it has long since faded, but what remains on my fingertips is only that still-firm texture.
Thinking of the faded writing on that card you were fingering, I too took out the photo by the window again. I can feel how the edges have worn soft.
I spent the whole evening wiping away the dust that clung to your fingertips when you closed the album. I can almost see you sitting there by the window.
While wiping away that dust, I was touching again the warmth that day's sunlight had left in the photograph.