I found my old wedding photograph in the dentist’s waiting room

Dear Delyara, This is going to sound absurd, but my old wedding photograph is hanging in my dentist’s waiting room. The photographer sold some of his work years ago, and apparently our picture became stock decoration for businesses. There we are: me at twenty-seven, my ex-husband kissing my forehead, both of us laughing beneath umbrellas because it rained through the ceremony. We divorced eleven years later. He is remarried. I have not seen him in four years. Today, while waiting for a root canal, I looked up and saw the happiest version of our marriage framed above a rack of outdated magazines. Nobody else in the room knew the couple had spent their final year sleeping separately. Nobody knew the bride later threw a plate against a wall or the groom once sat in his car for three hours because neither of us wanted to go inside. The receptionist noticed me staring and said, “Lovely photo, isn’t it?” I said yes. It is lovely. That is the uncomfortable part. The happiness was not fake simply because it did not last. I sat beneath our younger faces until my name was called, thinking how strange it is that strangers can use one real minute of your life as decoration long after you have stopped living inside the story they imagine.