He had found old photographs in his grandma's boxes, photos of his family. He had not wanted to burn them along with the rest of her things, he had tucked them inside his bag without looking at them, and now they were jumbled together in his soft, khaki satchel. He looked at them now, pulling them out of the bag one at a time.
When he looked at each he could easily recall exactly where and when it had been taken. He could shut his eyes and remember the smells, the sounds and where the light was coming from. He could feel the cold breeze or the warm sun on his skin.
There was one set of pictures in a blue, glossy Kodak envelope. Pictures of his family before they got sick. In one, his mother sat outside a yellow caravan while a four year old Oskar splashed and laughed in a washing-up bowl on the grass. The photos had been developed badly, there was a strong tint - too much orange. He liked to remember his family this way, bright orange and happy yellow.
The later ones that featured only Oskar or his grandma were different, bigger, they had switched to a new camera. He thought maybe they were different in another way. Maybe they were darker, sadder, maybe they had more blue in them.
He put the more recent photographs back in his satchel and picked up the yellow ones once more. These years in Minsk, these happy years were his past. Not Chernobyl, not Opachi. There was no reason to go back.
Oskar had come here to rest on the dust sheets before his next shift, but something else was claiming his attention.
All fiction owned by and copyrighted to Laura Gomez 2008