Put your hands on your hips… one leg up… yeah!
You know how I do it? I don’t even take photos! I take a video and screenshot!
I take live photos!
Ichiban, 7:00PM, 11/11/2023
our strongest memories are linked by sounds and smells. the running exhaust, the radio leaking through the window, the heat gradient running up the side of my arm from the incandescent lightbulb. photos can only take us so far — they are shortcuts, figures without depth or dimension. try committing these words, this moment, this raindrop of time. let it disappear behind the veil. sights, smells, sounds, me and you. point, grip, pull the trigger.
You look at pictures of your relatives and that’s the only thing you know them by… when people only know you through photos, it’s important to be present.
Couzens Hall, 8:00PM, 1/24/2024
there is a bin of photos for sale at the scrap center, fifty cents per stacked inch. they are shaken out of albums and cards, tossed aside, ink yellowing in the sun. i look through them and i imagine you looking with me, behind my shoulder. i have no photos of you — deleted or neglected, i do not remember — but it does not matter. i think about going to art school so i can learn to draw your face. what force flows through a pencil when it etches the subconscious into reality?
Actually, I didn’t show my teeth because I was insecure, so I didn’t smile.
Glen/Catherine Inbound, 12:00PM, 2/18/2024
an insecure mouth suffocates laughter. it is a cinch, a noose, like being shushed as you are strangled. the snaggletooth peeks out and waves to the camera. your eagerness betrays you, but only for a second. your grandparents sit on the top of the fridge, tight-lipped, stone-faced. i’m sorry, you say. what for? i grab your hand as the shutter clicks. carved out of paper, nonetheless, but a smile preserved.
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