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the fossil record |
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#13 |
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Class Picture They look me right in the eyes, even the one who is my younger self, three over from Father Bernard, seated and wearing his berretta. Four rows of us, standing stone still on the granite church steps across from the brick school where the nuns taught, and our nun behind the photographer making sure we don’t smile, boys in robes and ties, the girls in short heels, their robes jutting slightly over their impending breasts that marked an end to our eight years surely as this grammar school graduation. I moved away, never to return, so the class is frozen there, our Grecian urn. In a cassock, I could now pass for Father Bernard, and, like him, am forgetful of names, but know the faces. Together we bent our heads over pens, making our way through the letters, bent our heads in the same confessional, our muffled sins seeping through the curtain, bent and raised our heads for communion. I’ve read that we remember only memories, and I linger over the thirty-seven faces pooling all the memories from memory, dependent on the impulses of the brain, but also on this old photo I clasp now, conjuring all back and curious to know how many might still live, how many pictures remain also, regretting that I may be the last to hold us all together. —Lou Masson
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