Before Knowing

Edges cracked, the photograph

holds her smile like a promise

never made, crease slicing

through sunlight caught in her hair.

She doesn't know me yet,

nor I her—just a frame

of blurry eyes and quiet days,

a stranger stitched in sepia.

Fingers tremble, tracing lines

where laughter hasn’t echoed,

where memory waits unformed,

as the past folds in, silent,

and the face waits, waiting.