There are certain places where you can hear the air. Air, not the wind for that is certainly different. Wind makes a sound of conviction, the ocean does this too, consistently reminding you that it is at work. The work and the movement of wind – whether it be the roll of foam and light upon water or upon a field of grass or wheat – it is mesmerizing; a comb pulled through hair, a single breath rising and falling, stirring the senses in deafening abundance.

If wind is movement, air is sound; as if there is another person next to you. A person made up of buzzing insects and humidity, of a wheel turning round again and again.

She sat at the old cherry wood desk, scarred and rubbed lighter in certain places, sorting through photographs from the past. The walls were painted blue but covered so frequently with framed memories and trinkets and the occasional calendar. She kept hearing the air outside and wondered if she was alone or not. The faces in the pictures made her breathe more frantically. She swallowed once more, though she wasn’t thirsty. Nor was she upset, though no one would likely blame her if she became so.

There were pictures of a chestnut haired beauty, sharp in the chin and in the brow in most of pictures before her. There were scribbles on the back or bottom, each containing dates or places, ages and names. Some she recognized, others were a mystery. But she had resolved herself to that a long time ago, the mystery that one person is. If the particular chestnut beauty in the pictures were one thing, she thought, well, mysterious would suffice as a way to describe the chestnut beauty but there is no way this particular beauty was just one thing. Not this lady.

Yes, chin, hair, brow but it wasn’t any of those things that was so striking about the woman in the pictures. What was it? she thought as she shifted in the chair, rubbing her elbows along one of the lighter portions of the cherrywood desk. The eyes distracted her, true. There was thought there, ideas, opinions. Yes, there were vast amounts of opinions. No. It was none of that, she decided. A lifetime of gumption and backbone, of stubbornness and tenacity revealed itself only in the delicate thin setting of her mouth, were anywhere else it was carefully hidden.

Some pictures held color, dating themselves without assistance from the cursive pen markings, most were black and white. She stopped and stared at some while others she tried to memorize, and others still she shuffled through deliberately quickly. The picture of an unknown gentleman whose eyes were wide and lips unsmiling gave her particular pause. His uniform identified him as a soldier, his metals identified him as a hero, the handwriting identified him as the brother of a friend. But the eyes identified him as traumatized – as if he was still seeing things beyond comprehension instead of the camera lens in front of him.

She swallowed again, hearing a small choking sound escape her, recognizing the stinging in her eyes. A deep breath and with a shaking hand, she rotated the soldier delicately into the pile. Still tight in the chest, she wasn’t expecting to see the photograph that came next. Her mouth parted slightly, the boisterous air outside still turning. She felt still.

The blue walls disappeared around her and the cherrywood desk became invisible. Only the air remained, as the couple in the photograph took life and shape and began moving. The voices came softly at first, then became louder. Ignoring the pounding in her chest and the need to blink, she watched the figures take life.

“Come on you two!” shouted the female behind the camera.

“Just look over here!” “I’ve already told you!” the handsome gentleman in the pressed suit and tie shouted back. A young gentleman he was too, thin in the chest and stomach. “I can’t take my eyes off her!”

“Stop!” the chestnut beauty beside him scolded through her smile.

“Stop!” the female echoed from behind the camera.

“Sorry!” the young man said, not looking or sounding the least bit regretful. The beauty had a suit on as well, a fresh carnation attached to the jacket. Only one heel touched the ground at a time, one swept upward in a graceful arc, balancing the grip from the young suitor around her waist.

“You’re not going anywhere unless you look over here for one moment,” the photographer bargained.

“Fine with me! I could stay here.”

“She’ll starve!”

Apparently reminded of this beauty’s needs, he gave an exasperated sigh. The beauty shook her hair expertly, fluffing the perfectly pinned chestnut curls. She smiled at the lens, radiating something mysterious. The handsome young man, (likewise radiating, though it being from enchantment other than mystery), using the black Oldsmobile behind them for leverage in order to keep tightly in his arms, peeled his eyes from the woman.

Click!

The cherrywood desk reappeared and the blue walls resurfaced. The hands that held the stack of photographs trembled slightly, the air moved the nearby tree’s branches against the windowpanes like an erratic heartbeat. Her cheeks were cold in vertical lines, her throat swollen into a rubber ball. One simple picture; one among several others leading to other stories be they merry or sad, angry, winsome, ambiguous, abrupt. One simple picture, creating from it so many afterward.

It was sometime before she felt safe in releasing the pictures from her eyes, afraid that the people would move again within them and that she would miss the story of the next part of each memory. But as she did move, shifting the squeaky chair beneath her, she put the small stack back in the original place they had been stored for decades, where they had been fingered innumerably and recalled abundantly. She closed the thin soft bible around the faces, smelling faint traces of her grandmother’s perfume and – though unexplainable – her garden.

Outside, the air continued moving, turning like a wheel.