archival printing 2025-09-17T05:08:44Z

Rain lashed against my apartment windows last Tuesday as I scrolled through 17,642 digital ghosts. My thumb moved mechanically past sunsets in Santorini, birthday cakes with crooked icing, that ridiculous llama encounter in Peru - each image evaporating like steam from a kettle. The sheer weightlessness of it all suddenly crushed me. What good were these moments if they only lived in the cloud's cold belly? My grandmother's hands trembling as she turned thick album pages surfaced in my mind - th

That moment hit me at 3 AM - scrolling through seven years of cloud-stored photos felt like sifting through digital ghosts. Our Barcelona honeymoon sunset, Lucy’s first bark at the park, that spontaneous kitchen dance during lockdown… all trapped behind glass. My thumb ached from swiping, yet nothing felt real enough to grasp. Then SNAPS happened. Not through some ad, but via Mia’s wrinkled hands clutching a leather-bound album at her 80th birthday. "Made it last Tuesday," she’d winked, tapping