Category: Fiction

I see beauty in groups of women marching en masse in Washington, D.C., peacefully, passionately, wearing pink ‘Pussy Hats,’ while waving witty signs. Beauty is being able to breathe the still unpolluted air, before the EPA is completely gutted, on a walk through a National Park that hasn’t yet been closed or sold to a corporation for drilling rights, knowing this is perhaps a fleeting pleasure.

As the cascade of light is dimmed toward moonlight, I curl over onto my side. I admire his spine; I imagine his face. He lays waiting beside me. For without me, he remains silent.

It is the tremble of anticipation, the held breath. It is found in the exact second when the parachute does’t open, in the lingering space between fingertips when lovers part. It is the infinitesimal moment between my girlfriend’s sleepy eyes lighting on me beside her and her first morning smile.

To capture beauty is to restrain its infinity, its abundance and its multiplicity. My story is about the transience of beauty as manifested by Antonio’s successive failure at capturing his lover’s face. What we have left of beautiful things is their essence and our memories of their existence but even that eludes most of us sometimes.

Our concept of beauty stems from our consciousness of the passing of time. The five senses guide us through our days and every so often a composite image, person, or scene has the capacity to activate our emotions and blind us with desire.