Fugue # 7

I brush and blow away the dust on a frame.

- Great-grandpa was handsome.

- Yes, he was.
- Ridiculously handsome.
- Some people thought he looked like Cary Grant.
- Ha, did you?
- Not really, no. I always told people, told myself, that he looked more like Gregory Peck, but that may have been wishful thinking, because I never cared so much for the Brits.

The whole box is filled with pictures of him and them. Some in frames, some in snapshot albums. We talk about him as we look through the attic.

- Do you miss him?
- Most days. I wouldn't trade away a moment of right now, but that doesn't mean that looking back doesn't make me sad about what's passed.

I reach for another box, flaps folded over each other. I open I and find postcards and a rusting tin can with a piece of newspaper rubberbanded over the open end, holes poked through it with a pencil. Inside, a handful of cicada shells. We called them locusts, and there were so many that summer.