A few photos later the fir stands alone, decked with tinsel in the picture window. People once owned these moments. Now I do. What's left crumbles in my hands as I thumb through and wonder. It is so picture perfectly dicotomous. All of the energy expended, bodies heated, meals cooked and consumed, shitting, sleeping, breathing. Singing laughter of tots swinging around tinseled trees. All of it left cold in my hands. A bright flash of light, gone dim. It seems like a bulb left to burn in a room with no one coming to sit to read by the light.t.b.cont'd