Out of the Picture

by Kristen Tsetsi

I rode my bike past a little girl wearing a little-girl dress - straight, simple, and sleeveless - and standing in the middle of her parents' shining, watered lawn. A red bandanna held back her thin, little-girl hair. I was reminded of seventies-tinged, white-bordered pictures of my sister when she was little, in her own straight, square-patterned dress, standing on the lawn, sunlight on her thin, little-girl hair. The ranch-style home in the photograph is a house of the past. The big-wheel beside her - I can still hear the rattle of the dirt in the hard tires - has been gone for years, and the plastic chair behind her in driveway isn't made, anymore. And I thought, as I passed by that little girl standing in the middle of her green lawn, how strange it felt to be riding my bike at the periphery of someone's childhood snapshot.

6S

Kristen Tsetsi, whose full catalog is here, is the author of Homefront.