Your Picture When You Were Different
You showed me a picture the other day, a picture
when you were different. I took the picture from your hand
carefully, wondering if the you in it was someone I wouldn't recognize. My fear
evaporated with my first glance.
It was you, sitting blackly, in front of a white
wall. Black hair, black dress, black leggings, black shoes. I thought
of a statement of mathematics: the subtraction of color from the sum of all
color.
Your face betrayed the equation. Nearly as pale as
the wall you eclipsed, your face was the sum, restrained,
but not absorbed, by
the power of the subtraction.
What were you thinking, as you were looking toward the
camera, through the physics of the lens, past the
mechanics of the shutter, your
image enwebbed by the chemistry of the film?
I looked up from the picture, and our eyes met. You were
watching me intensely, and I wondered, what you
were thinking now, as you looked
through the physiology of my eyes, into the metaphysics of my soul?
I handed the picture back to you carefully, for fear of
disturbing the thoughts of the you, when you were
different. As you put the
picture in the pocket of your white blouse, your blond hair fell across your
eyes.
"I certainly did look different," you said. And
as you brushed the strands of sunlight from your face, your
smile lit up the
universe.
Ed Hoyer, Jr.
October 1991