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