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SNAPSHOT

My husband emails me a close-up photo
taken with his cell phone on the airplane
about to take off in an icy rain.
The look on his face is tender. Consistent
as he is in his expression of love for me,
I more likely follow a day of closeness
with a well-timed snap.
Everything changes, everything dies:
May this truth be a doorway, not the armor.
Marriage, too, is a kind of dying.
I look into love’s benign, shattering face,
those eyes I want to remember, to mirror,
and save the photo in case the plane goes down.

Marie-Elizabeth Mali