Photography is thievery, the taking of pictures

I don’t like saying this: she was sometimes the kind of person who thought that looking good together was enough, like if only I were more photogenic. And I always thought of myself as the kind of person with a body that had to be looked past, not at. It was a point of tension is what I’m getting at. Prepositions and the way I put my sentences together in general were another, like what was I but rough edges that ran all the way to the core of my being.

So I am going through this shoebox and seeing how in every one of these she has the same smile, and I am thinking to myself that it was you all along who didn’t photograph well, the way you tried so hard to fake it while I grimaced and accepted that I was uncomfortable about the idea of being a physical presence that could be trapped this way in two dimensions when really I ran on and on and on in my head and also looked a good deal better, generally speaking.

There were a handful of pictures of her with someone else at the bottom, buried underneath all our posed memories, some guy who could be a model if his teeth weren’t so yellow. She was making the same face as she’s ever made, wide smile, head leaned a little toward the other person in the frame, arm around at the waist. Like she was a cardboard cut-out of a famous person in a storefront at the mall. I could have made a flipbook, her never changing as the world, and I, and this other dude, changed around her. It’s the kind of thing that could probably mean something, but doesn’t.

Dreaming through every obstacle

What she does is she talks in her sleep, a conversation we have that develops slowly toward the end of its sentences like Polaroid film. In her sleep she is brim-full of accusation, mostly about my wakefulness, like there’s some betrayal in me laughing when she says she only smokes cigarettes on beachfront property, and even then only when it’s middle school.

The thing is, though, it does feel like a betrayal. Like I’m seeing her opened up, like naked in a new and unfair way that I can’t reciprocate. In the daytime, she stays quiet, there’s this great reservation in her speech that’s developed over the last year or so, and this from a person who already uses pronouns like they’re well-worn blankets, who says you know… instead of naming what’s really bothering her. It is either things are being unsaid or there are no things to say.

So I listen intently to what bubbles up, and maybe that’s a cheat. In fact, I know it is. But I’m anxious to catch the smallest hint, the barest trace, the tiniest reassurance that things are going better than me staying up late to play videogames because I can’t sleep and her crestfallen and sighing and then asleep on the couch would seem to indicate. And I never get it if I’m being honest. Maybe that I’m looking is enough.

Who has money for the chainsaw men?

Then there was that day the tree fell down over our driveway because of too much rain, this massive oak that laid right down when it had had enough. We took turns taking a photo in front of it, you with your arms thrust out and open and one leg crossed over the other like it was your own magic trick, me with hands thrust deep in pockets wearing my best daguerreotype face. Remember for me when you get the chance the way it rested on thick branches and towered above us even on the ground, how you remarked that it was bigger—and it was—than our little decades-old house. We wondered together about bugs and smiled and smiled.

It’s a rainy day at my apartment and I’m thinking about it. But I’m not allowed to call and tell you. It’s been so long since I’ve been allowed that I hardly feel things about it anymore. The gentlest of bummers.

Being trapped that way felt pretty good, the way we didn’t bother showering and stood in front of the pantry wondering what we could throw together for dinner. How we avoided television and electricity in general, just because it seemed uncouth, somehow. This was history, this was being alive. Count the rings and see.