The School Picture

One autumn morning,

everyone lined up

for school pictures.

One by one,

they smiled.

Click.

Then everyone went back to class.

A week later,

the photos arrived.

The classroom filled with laughter.

"I blinked!"

"My hair looks funny!"

"I can't believe that's me!"

One teenager looked quietly

at their own picture.

After a long moment,

they whispered,

"I don't look like that."

After school,

they showed it to a friend.

"It looks exactly like you."

Later,

their grandmother smiled

when she saw the same picture.

"I love your eyes."

The teenager looked

at the photograph again.

It hadn't changed.

The same picture.

The same smile.

Yet somehow,

everyone seemed

to be looking

at someone different.

That night,

they stood in front

of the bathroom mirror.

Then they looked

back at the photograph.

Mirror.

Photo.

Mirror.

Photo.

Neither one

felt big enough

to hold

everything they knew

about themselves.

Before going to bed,

they slipped

the picture

into a drawer.

Then,

for the first time,

they wondered...

If one picture

can never tell

the whole story...

perhaps

one opinion can't either.

Pause for a Moment

Sometimes,

we let one picture

decide how we feel.

Sometimes,

we let one opinion

decide who we are.

Perhaps...

they were never

the whole story.