Sweet foreigner

Anastasia lived through her camera the way some people live through touch. The old Nikon weighed heavy on her neck like an inherited sin. She stood at the water's edge, toes digging into the soft mud, looking for a subject that would justify the weight of time she had left to photograph it. The tourist arrived the way heat finds skin, sudden and obvious. He wanted directions. She gave him something else instead. Her apartment lay three streets away, small enough that she could cross the floor in seven barefoot steps. He followed because his body understood a language his mouth had not yet learned. Her hands moved first, surprisingly steady for ninety-two years of skin. The sheets smelled of lavender and dust. Afterward they lay side by side and the room held their silence like a secret it had heard before. He asked nothing. She offered nothing else. Light cut across his thigh where the curtain lifted. She considered the angles but did not reach for the camera. Some pictures ruin what they capture.