Toss and Catch
Look at the way she hangs in the sky above him,
a buoyant point tossed and suspended atop the sturdy
upward stretch of his torso, a small rain of sea
trickling from her wet baby body and polka-dotted swimsuit.
Her joy is unmistakable. The concentration of her father
as he waits to catch her before she hits the water—palpable,
though you can barely make out his face. Waist deep
in a muddy sea, his reflection is a blur on the surface.
Also missing from this picture is my own salt-
stung heart, am best left behind
the lens to capture these fragments and cling to them
like a life raft, later print, frame and arrange them to
remind me that happiness does, in fact, have its place in our life together.
What you focus on will grow itself into perspective, they say.
Like how, behind them, the day is a striking, clear blue, save
a few clouds that mottle the sky. See how a bird flies towards them?
But then what do you make of the pier, or rather, what’s left of it, how it
spikes out of the water in the distance? And the horizon line—
even the horizon line is slightly crooked. I did not shoot
the image that came later, the one where his grip
on her slips. Where she goes under, swallows the sea,
baptized into the reality that every moment of joy
has its counterpoint. She cried some, but soon enough,
our girl is airborne again, and though her small hands
don’t quite let go of his wrists, she lets herself be thrown,
be caught, continues to love the shimmering throttle
as she tumbles through air, gravity repeatedly pulling her back
towards his arms, which stay open and ready, wait to catch her
and everything in her life that goes with it, which, despite my perpetual bent
towards longing and loneliness, I learn, will always include me.
