Senior Portrait

Senior Portrait

You were 16 in the picture with a head full of rogue hair and

naiveté, decades from the widow’s peak and domestic valleys

that would develop during decades when you weren’t looking.

It doesn’t say so in the yearbook, but I’m sure it would read,

Most Likely to Hide in Poems if the class of ’91 knew you today.

I haven’t told my wife how I discovered the photo after she

went to sleep and that I sat in my chair and sobbed because

that’s what men do when they finally dig deep enough to find

themselves and reflect on the distance and cost between the

years and the shovel. If you’ve ever struggled with being an

empty-nester and second husband, welcome to my lunchtime

club where I’m President and Secretary and the notes I take

each meeting are scribed in a second-hand even I can’t

decipher, but I think they’re almost always about the irony

of acquiring loss. Why did life decide to be best friend and

bully and make us mascot of an alma mater with a fight

song we can’t forget that sings more like surrender? So

here I sit, face to photo, grace to teenage Romo, saying

with or without someone posing our head and telling us

to smile in our rented tux and clip-on, You are good enough

for any bow tie affair.

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This Post is republished on Medium.

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Photo credit: iStock