She picked up the stack of pictures from the end table and flipped through them. Most get a cursory glance. But for a few of them, she paused and gazed steadily into the faded eyes that look up into hers. These pictures that live outside of memory and screen – what stories do they tell? Is it really a land that time forgot, a lost realm that belongs only to the dreams of those aged few? There is one picture in particular, a candid shot of a group of friends in front of a lake. Storm clouds crowd the frame and the three youths glow with the vibrancy that seems self-evident in the moment captured. One boy laughs as he half raises his hand in jest while the other looks away across the water. The solitary girl gazes at the lens and squints, mouth half open as she wonders if the button has been pressed. The moment lost in the past and now lost in the present as it is shuffled to the back of the deck and the women sat down on the edge of the chair. She wondered what she was thinking then. Those clear eyes and that unfiltered invitation. Why was her hope then so much smaller than her dreams? She closed her eyes and touched her brow. There were wrinkles there that marked her prayers. And in her dreams now she heard the piano playing the melody she ached to hear.