When it happened, it happened as much inside Mac as out.
Her three friends were grouped under the lush white curve of the arbor, a triangle of pretty young girls. Some instinct had Mac shifting her position, just slightly, tilting the camera just a bit. She didn't know it as composition, only that it looked nicer through the lens.
And the blue butterfly fluttered across her range of vision to land on the head of a butter yellow dandelion in Emma‟s bouquet. The surprise and pleasure struck the three faces in that triangle under the white roses almost as one.
Mac pressed the shutter.
She knew, knew, the photograph wouldn't be blurry and dark or fuzzy and washed out. Her thumb wouldn't be blocking the lens. She knew exactly what the picture would look like, knew her grandmother had been wrong after all.
Maybe happy ever after was bull, but she knew she wanted to take more pictures of moments that were happy. Because then they were ever after.
Vision in White
__________________
Photograph
Ed Sheeran
We keep
this love in a photograph
We made
these memories for ourselves
Where our
eyes are never closing
Hearts are
never broken
Times
forever frozen still
__________________
“It doesn't matter. That's the point. It doesn't matter that my mother is my mother, or that things don't always work exactly the way you thought they should. Moments matter. I know that better than anyone, but I never let it apply to me. Not to me. People matter, how they feel, how they connect, who they are alone and together. All that matters, no matter how quickly the moment passes. Maybe because it passes. What matters is you're the blue butterfly.”
“I'm . . . what?”
“Come on, Professor. Dr. Maguire. You know all about metaphors and analogies and symbolism. You flew into my life, just landed in it unexpectedly. Maybe miraculously. And the picture formed. It just took me a while to see it.”
“I'm not . . . Oh, the picture. Wedding Day, the one you took when you were a girl.”
“Epiphanies. I had one then, and I had one tonight. I want this.”
Vision in White