"Nice Try, Lifetime" response - Andy Busch - "A Senior Picture", "A Snapshot of My Parents' First Date"

Hey folks!

Hope you all are creating something good for this prompt! Today's first couple of writings comes from Andy Busch! We will post more of his work tomorrow as well. If you are interested in sending something for the theme, submit to our email! midwestwritingcenter@gmail.com

Enjoy!

A Senior Picture

A picture of seventy years;

A sweet, beautiful, innocent girl

Waiting to launch into life:

The city, the war;

Marriage and sex;

Womanhood, motherhood,

Adventure and hurt,

Waiting to take her away—

But not yet.

I looked into her eyes:

I was struck by the power of her beauty.

My mom.

My mom who I don’t really know.

Oh, I have lots of pictures;

I remember her laugh and her jokes and her cooking.

I remember her struggle with weight.  

Her depression.

But I looked in her eyes and it hit me—

Hard—

In those beautiful eyes there was

Poverty.

Humor.

Love.

Intelligence.

Power.

Resilience.

All that had gone into making the woman she was at a very mature seventeen.

All that was waiting for her in the thirty-nine years she had left.

All that,

  in a picture of seventy years.

A senior picture

 like a million others.

My mom.

A Snapshot of My Parents' First Date

“Many waters cannot quench love,

neither can the floods drown it.”

—Song of Solomon 8:7

It shines through grainy black and white,

through decades of neglect and dust:

the passion, breathless promise, love;

the joy and hope of young romance

as fresh as flowers in the park;

the shy and gleaming smiles;

the fierce desire

    as bright as sailor’s whites

    in May Chicago’s sun.

It pierces through the decades, dust and death

that look to cover, sweep aside and dull

the fierce and never-fading light.

—Andy Busch