When the morning light spills across the windows of the animal shelter, he likes to sit in the old wicker chair and leaf through that yellowed photo album. The first page shows him as a boy, crouching beside a stray dog with a camera in hand. In the shot, the boy is on tiptoe, pouring cat food into a stray cat's bowl. Grass stains on his shirt and mud on his pant leg are like an unspoken secret between them.
Later, the album filled with little fragments: the interview drafts he threw away, with his sketches on the backs; the camera he couldn't fix, which he fitted with a new lens; the stormy night he carried him to the hospital. Their footprints blurred into a patch of water outside the emergency room, like a bedraggled yet vivid flower.
Later still, the last page of the album held a faded movie ticket stub, dated the day they decided to rebuild the shelter. On the back, in his handwriting, were the words “One who gathers the light, and follows it too.” Beside them, he had drawn a crooked little sun, its rays falling right on his name.
The breeze brushed the windowsill, and the ginkgo leaf specimen at the foot of the page trembled gently. They had picked it up last autumn. He had said, “One leaf holds a whole year's scenery.” He had smiled and replied, “One page of an album holds a lifetime of light.”
