When she needed it, it was always there, it went with her everywhere.
Mum and Dad, on their wedding day, looking so happy… Sometimes, it was enough to slip her hand in her pocket and feel its corners; feel the flatness of it in its plastic jacket. The cover that fits it so well; that protects it, keeps it safe. Whenever she needed it, it was there. She could take it out and look at it; talk to it sometimes. She could share her thoughts and dreams. She would tell it about the bad times and the good. More recently, she could tell it about how her life was getting brighter. She had been homeless most of her life, and it was only recently that things began to pick up.
Of late, she kept the family photo in her purse; the owning of a purse being an indication of how her life was truly moving on. She had found a job that she could do and do well. She worked in the kitchen of a café, preparing all sorts of hot food to order. She seemed to have a natural talent for it. She was now renting in a house with three other girls, one of them waitressing in the same place.
It was only she who knew that the photo was the most precious thing that she possessed. It was sad to think that she was shuffled around from one institution to another with such frequency in her very first years of life. It was sad to think that she has been homeless for such a long time. It was sadder still, when you consider that she found the photo, along with some scraps of paper, stuck beneath the wheel of a rubbish skip, in an alley where she slept one night.
Nevertheless, only she knows the value she places on it.
It is enough that she knows.