she tore her other lives from the sunlight
lives she won’t taste now
leaves from a book or pages of breath
and let them flutter from her fingertips
or cupped their darkness between her palms
as if trying to warm a broken moth
struggling for a moment her eyes lowered
she wondered at her terror
terrified by her joy
,
i can't help but wonder at the larger story. there's a severity both in her eyes and in the last two lines that causes me to dare not assume a thing for it seems i know nothing.
ReplyDeletexo
erin
love that opening line!
ReplyDeleteThanks for finding my blog, and for the nice words. These are lovely photographs and words.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Erin her eyes just draw you in and seem to say it all.
ReplyDeleteLove this picture and the concept of the multiple selves, it's something I think a lot about. I like how she is both outward and inward looking, a metaphor for our double lives.
ReplyDeleteah, i see the severity in her eyes, but not in the last two lines, caught between terror and joy she seems dissolving into the blank pages of her possible lives... i see her gentle.
ReplyDeleteyou know that i am obsessed with this too, and much on the Bridge is about this, including many of my self-portraits, attempts at capturing the lost, possible selves...
but perhaps this is what Erin means, this obsession and concentration of her, so self-absorbed in her worlds, this might be seen as severity, too...
erin: i don't know these girls, so i don't know her story, either ... but of course there is the story of the photograph and the persistence of her moment here with us, which is no less true because she has moved on, somewhere, oblivious to us ...
ReplyDeleteseverity? i don't know ... maybe a look of intense inwardness, still unsure what world is forming itself in her, around her....
Irene: Thank you. It represents a kind of minor obsession....
ReplyDeleteHannah: Thanks for coming by. I will be back to the Storialist....
ReplyDeletemusicwithinyou: Yes, everyone seems drawn to her gaze, and i agree -- she seems to focus very far away, or deep inside, or in another world ....
ReplyDeleteMarion: Yes, our double lives -- and i couldn't help thinking about the other girl in the picture -- are they not two versions of the same girl (almost), outward and inward? just this kind of metaphor, theme and variation?
ReplyDeleteRoxana: i know of your obsessions ... and this discussion would not seem at all out of place on the Bridge, i think ... i thought, for one wild moment, of calling this picture "Self-Portrait" ... now i wonder what the reaction would have been :-)
ReplyDelete... and this dissolving into the blank pages of the possible selves ... i feel that so often, most days ....
Oh! I thought they were both the same girl, that you used some clever photo tricks to get the double effect. So yes, two versions of the same girl :) Though it suddenly becomes a touch sinister when the theme of the double or the doppleganger becomes a part of it.
ReplyDeleteThere's an intensity here in spite of the lightness of the photo.
ReplyDelete