Washing, drying, and caring for your photograph

Buy a binder and a few sets of (archival, acid-free) plastic sleeves. Fill up the binder. Buy another one. Buy a portfolio on sale at the campus bookstore. Start buying archival boxes. You will move ten times in the next thirteen years. Each move leaves a little bit behind, so that thirteen years later all you have left from college are a handful of books you never read, and these boxes.

Here is the edge of a creek in Yosemite.

Here is a line of columns in Vienna.

Here are the bows on Mirriam’s back, fraying strips of calico.

Here is Judith, head tossed back, laughing.

Here is your best friend Sheila, sitting cross-legged in the studio. Her face is turned so that only the smallest edge of profile shows past her hair. A shadow runs down along one arm and across her body. She is half-silhouette, half silver. In a moment, you know, she will turn to smile at you, while you change film holders and prepare for another shot. You hold the photograph in your hands, waiting, but that moment never comes.

I have a beginning and an ending. I even have a few things in between. It feels good.