We rummage through pictures and I try to assign dates to them. Most might as well belong to a stranger. I can’t explain how it is that one year can run into another without mercy, rivers merging from a vaguely remembered headwater to chase an uncertain end. But you hold up each picture like a specimen and ask When was this? When was this? I’m ashamed. I’m not even sure about some of the baby pictures… which is you and which is your brother? Who are those strangers holding you? You want to attach history to the images, the Gulf War or asteroids bruising the face of Jupiter. I tell you to think bigger. Go back to landing on the moon. The Inquisition. That ripe hanging apple and the thunderous spark from God’s finger. Anything before my receding figure, the taste of your mother still on my lips.