Picture This, She Swears To God

Kingston Public Schools, Yearbook Photos 1976–1982

Picture This, She Swears to God

Photographs have a way of organizing us—
time, place, memory, temperament.

From birth to twelve, I don’t have any.

A fire took everything.
Then we stopped capturing time.

No pictures.
No birthdays.
No rituals.

We didn’t record history.

No one wanted memories.

Everything lives in me.

I run films in my head.
I’ve never owned an image of my face frozen in time.

My sister found old yearbook photos online.
We couldn’t afford them back then.

I don’t remember the camera.

I remember everything else.

I move through memory by feeling.

I never see my face.

A summer day in 1978—

Shorty—the man who ran the store—smells like tobacco and sugar,
his smile as wide as he is tall.

White metal shelves. Black caps.
Hostess racks—honey buns, lemon pies, Twinkies.

Captain Crunch. Pork rinds. Louisiana hot sauce.
Vienna sausages in squat little cans.

The layout is exact.
The feeling—alive.

I’m running home.

Soda in one hand.
Jawbreakers in the other.

The movie plays.

Red Oklahoma clay.

Big bluestem stitching the land back together after the Dust Bowl—
tall, feathered, beautiful, dangerous.

Sharp enough to slice your leg open.

I still carry the scar.

No schedules.
No supervision.

I was alone.
I was free.
I ran wild.

A black water moccasin in the sun.

Coiled.
Watching.

It strikes.
Misses.

My heart leaps ahead of me.
My body follows.

I run.

Damn lucky.

(Only in my head. Swearing wasn’t allowed.)

I was a head-swearer.

Profane. Precise. Alive.

Life demanded it.

I kept it to myself—
a private language moving through a quiet, angel-faced child.

At night, we prayed.

My mother would begin,
and I would follow.

Now I lay me down to sleep…

Then silence.

Then—

shit-damn-hell
shit-damn-hell
shit-damn-hell

A chant.
A test.
A conversation.

I wanted to understand God.

Not behave for Him.

And I swear—He laughed.

Not punishment.
Not fear.
Recognition.

I giggled with God.

I didn’t tell anyone about the snake.

I kept it.

Not as danger—
as prophecy.

Movement. Survival. Forward.

Religion would have told a different story.

A child spared.
A warning.
A brush with evil.

Grace meant something different where I grew up.

Be thankful.
You could end up dead in a ditch.

Fear, dressed up as faith.

But I was never afraid.

I moved through childhood like weather—
uncontained,
unwatched,
unwritten.

I recorded everything.

Not my face—
my experience.

To this day, I can feel my hair pulled back by the wind.
Smell honeysuckle in the air.
See willow trees bending near Mr. Dabney’s pond.

Grapevines twisted through the yard.
Green fruit—too sour.

Perfect.

I feel all of it.

Still—
I don’t see her.

We were poor.

Not poetic poor.

Actual poor.

No socks.
No extras.
No illusion.

We were a scattered cast of characters—
no script, no structure, no audience.

Unsupervised.

The world was mine.

So I made one.

I believed in myself.

Not as an idea—
as a fact.

Years later, I heard something that stayed with me:

If a plant is poisonous,
the antidote grows nearby.

That’s how I understand my life.

Fearlessness was the antidote.

I had it early.

I was a daydreamer.
A builder.
A witness.

I planned a life before I knew how.

A city. Books. Travel. Work. Family.

I did it.

And still—
something pulled me back.

This week, I saw her.

My face.

Not imagined.
Real.

The girl in those photos—
she knew.

She wasn’t broken.
She wasn’t behind.
She wasn’t waiting to become.

She already was.

Being left alone didn’t ruin me.

It revealed me.

I trusted my spirit.

Not because someone told me to—
because it worked.

There was shame.
There was noise.
There was disappointment.

But there was always me—
running.

That never left.

Seeing her now—
it lands differently.

She isn’t memory.

She’s directive.

Run.

More improv.
Less script.

I lost that for a while.

Chasing structure.
Performance.
Proof.

It cost me.

Now I see it.

She was never gone.

She was waiting.

My life has never been about what was recorded.

It’s been about what was lived.

Now I have both.

A face.
And a knowing.

She looks back at me—
steady.
certain.

We were always a team.

I just forgot.

Now I remember.

She is not broken.
She is not behind.
She is not a story of survival.

She is grace.

It turns out,
the devil wears socks,
while God is a snake coiled in the sun.