Photo/Text 2: Trucks

They strike me as relics, like the Pripyat bumper cars, though it’s been only a month, maybe two, since he left them parked in the sandbox, but so quickly the marks of our presence are buried—pine needles fall, maples sprout near red tires—and though this is probably not the last time he has left them—probably he will return yet, to turn sand, to haul another load—there will nonetheless be a last time. The trucks will be abandoned, and he will be fully grown, a man, a person who does not concern himself with plastic toys. But now, when he sees that I have taken an interest, he comes to explain that he baked a cake with a candle in it for me in the truck bed and it’s been waiting here all this time. I thank him; I tell him I like his trucks. Pleased, he wants to know why I am taking pictures. Because, I explain, I want to remember what his trucks looked like the last time he played with them. But this is not the last time, he protests. I know, I tell him. But I am marking it now anyway, so I don’t miss the last time.