Within the confines of my wallet I carry a small instant picture. It isn’t anything fancy but it brings me such joy. Within its black borders it shelters a scene of a water’s edge with a goose in the foreground. I think she mentioned Cackling, I feel it’s more Canada. The picture itself isn’t the source of my elation, it’s the scene behind the lens, the one out of view that makes me smile whenever I see it. We sat together for a while looking out over the water, in fact our presence made the geese want to wander up initially. This wasn’t where it started, no. It started when I got lost in the city in an attempt to find nature while she fueled her vehicle to make use of the time I had misspent. Once we met up however she quickly fell into the usual routine, a curt greeting and off to the races with whatever today’s form of entertainment was. I had picked this one, with her help because heaven knows how I manage to make any decisions on my own. I couldn’t help but feel all morning that she’d rather be somewhere else, maybe with someone else, possibly doing something else. I never really want to be a burden and I definitely don’t want pity from anyone so in my state of analyzing my surroundings I found something I would have rather been kept oblivious to. I think I liked her. Not as a friend but someone I wanted more from. Thing is, I don’t know how to ask for more. In my twenty-four years I had one whirlwind of a relationship for two years and that wasn’t anything of my own doing. Guided by a siren whose looks were as beautiful as her song I spent two years in bliss and three more broken. Eventually I approached the dating pool again but found it covered in scum, nothing really compared to the clean pool of water I had known so long ago. That morning at the water’s edge I wanted to take an instant picture, and I did but my subject was out of frame. I wanted to take one of her. Her short black hair, particular smile, the two scars near her jaw. The faint little mustache hairs on her upper lip with those beautiful brown eyes. I wanted to capture her essence in a fraction of time but I wanted to give it to her. In a gesture unspoken, in hopes she’d understand that in that moment in time there was a boy who thought she deserved the world. With this picture she’d see that in all of the world’s moments she just happened to exist in this one where some fool doesn’t recognize the walls between. Except, maybe he does. And in his observations he decides the wisest course of action is to take a picture of today’s event’s, to have and to hold in his wallet. So when times get hard and the pressures of life build up he can recall a moment in time where his heart fluttered and his insides were bruised from the pterodactyls soaring within as he found it hard with himself to refuse admittance to his true feelings. So he can remember what it was like to keep his mouth shut to prevent the spoiling of a good thing by requesting more. So maybe later on if she did really find him bland and boring and not worth her time and maybe really honored his wish of not being granted pity and left, he would have a lovely goose; forever encased in a black frame with a faded wash over it. He would forever have those couple of minutes spent with a wild world beside him, wishing so deep down that he could maybe build a home there and find solace within.
For My Own Enjoyment
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