Pictures of Her

"When you touched my cheek that time... I told you to touch me everywhere. But you touched my cheek."

"I let my professionalism slip."

"Was that after you took the picture?"

I nodded.

"In that picture, was I naked?"

"No, You were just you."

We made love on that blanket in the open field, the rough stone wall of the old barn just inside my field of vision when I threw my head up to pour myself into her. I hadn't lasted very long, and she'd encouraged me not to try. This time wasn't about that.

After, we lay side by side on the blanket holding hands and staring up into the clear blue sky. Eventually, we got up to get some water and went back to the blanket to take those documentary pictures of her body. Then she took the camera and documented mine.

The second time was slow and luxurious and ecstatic for both of us as the sun sank to the trees and turned our fallow field to golden yellow and orange before the stars came out.

======

I never did tell her that I was quitting as her annual photographer, but the next year, I was unavailable.

Her 21st birthday was also her wedding day, and she had to hire a photographer. I would have done it, but I was too busy telling Tina that I would love, honor, and cherish her for the rest of our lives, and I didn't remotely have to pretend to mean it.

Then I was too busy kissing the bride, dancing with the bride, and making love to the bride. The hired photographer wasn't invited for the last of those, but the next day, the day after her birthday, we commemorated the whole of our first year of being madly in love in pictures that only the two of us would ever see.

======

The last picture I ever took was Tina in her hospital bed, surrounded by monitors and machines, tubes running in and out of her. Despite all that, and all the years, my wife was still the prettiest girl in school.

In the picture, she has my hand wrapped in both of hers, barely strong enough to hold it, a melancholy but peaceful smile on her wrinkled face as she brings my gnarled fingers to her lips.

It wasn't the day after her birthday, but this too needed to be commemorated, and my hand was the real hand. The One.

It was the day before her last day, the opposing bookend of her fully documented life. It had been a very, very good life for both of us,

I was left with only memories and sixty-three years of wonderful pictures.

Among all those pictures - among the pictures of our wedding day, our children, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, our vacation in Italy where we made love on a marble terrace under the stars - there's one in particular that still melts my heart.

She's fully clothed in picture #43 from the second memory card of our session after her 19th birthday. Her poise, her posture, the neutral, focused expression on her stunningly beautiful face as she concentrated on some mundane task, it was her. It captured who she was, everything she was, in that moment, and in all her moments.

I'm not in that picture, not in those days, but still, it was a picture of me falling in love with her. I never stopped falling.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it.

If you did, why not throw a star or two on it? Or a heart? Better yet, drop a comment to let me know what you thought. Stars are nice, but hearing from you, the reader, means a lot. Even if it's critical, give it to me straight.

I write many different kinds of stories, but if you like romantic tales, you might also enjoy:

Our New Nude Life (Exhibitionist & Voyeur - 19K words)

A college couple ponder the shape of their future together.

Last Summer (First Time - 9K words)

Lifelong friends face being separated forever.

Follow me if you'd like to be notified of new stories.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*