The solid certain weight in
her hand. The man who first
handed her his 35mm SLR,
a camera so far removed
from the typical Kodaks in
their slick plastic cases.
At the odd moment, wind calls
through an open field or
from around the corner of
some bare-boned house,
conjures up Jon, if he married,
had kids, documented every
sunny day, or if the drugs
finally ate him alive.
Or if, as she’d done once,
he simply put up the cameras,
willed himself to not need a lens
to see small beauty, potential
heartbreaker, there in front
of him, that passion gone too,
exploded, burned, buried.
The wind, tactile and eager,
leans up against her. There’s
the sound of a loose door
smacking over and over
against a wall somewhere
not so far away, a dog’s yip,
car tires too far off to ever be
seen clearly, sometimes
scraps of voices snagged
by a fast cross breeze.
He’s grown into that
insistent glimmer on busted
window glass, splintered
front porch she knows better
than to step up on. Vines knit
through concave roof, buckled
walls, over railings. She
stands thigh deep in tangled
frost burned grass, can see
clean through this house,
wonders if love just made
him uneasy or seriously
terrified him to silence.
She pulls stick-me-tights
from scarf, sweater, even
her hair, camera strap, tries
to get them out whole, later
finds embedded shards,
seeds tenaciously hopeful
they’ve found a place to
start again, the past just that,
all the mistakes, stupid decisions,
left there in the slow decay
neglect brings, left for her
to document this day in
a shroud of bright sunlight.
