January

Some photographs tumble through years and years and land at your steps.

Nameless, she can be a patron saint for this month of January.

Out of a silence too deep to fathom, she looks. The oval frame is lost, the glass broken. Flowers may once have stood in water in a vase beside this portrait.

Someone's daughter, she may have been her father's pride. Someone's mother, her younger face may have seemed a pattern for her daughter's.

Sometimes all that you need is a reminder of a time when there was no serious question of someone's not always being around.