Cheese.

Cheese.

2022.

Sometimes taking pictures feels so good.
To connect with a moment,
and hold it with you through time,
like a keepsake.

This is me, connecting,
in a frame that had so recently connected with some other light
that it’s actually a mirror.
And what does the mirror quality
offer in the newness of a connection?

You see and hear yourself in another light.
Maybe even taste different than you used to, you notice.
You might map the contours of you
after so much erosion and violent weather.
And you might use any and all tools at your disposal.

Fingertips for touching and drawing
and connecting dots on your skin
from here to there to there.
Tongues for the same
and for finding poems inside you
to whisper,
to draw near.

The largeness of you.
The smallness of you too.

All the while, you intentionally juxtapose
your texture to someone else’s,
feeling around for truth.
Seeking your convex to my concave.
Going under, as a particle and a wave.

The topography of trauma also offers a resistance,
sometimes,
to the smoothness of your surfaces.
Sometimes
to the slow the movement in your body.
Sometimes the opposite,
offering a quiet shakiness
that blurs the image of that connection.
Perfectly.

Either way, the image of you defines the beauty of this world.
By any metric, you were made for this, as you are, where you stand.

And
I want to photograph you.
Forever.