Here are two real photos shot on film of two real people in the middle of a far too real argument,

and in it, you can clearly see our defense mechanisms, our battles, our means of both trophy and entropy.

Me, unwilling to perform past set-up, resistant to looking away but pulled back from physical intimacy, face-front, overblown or overexposed, aggressive confrontation while melting, logic bullying but thin-skinned.

 

And you, vulnerable but shadowed, figuring out where the light is as quickly as possible, reaching toward both me and sun, performing the feeling of okay, part pretzel part fence, active and strong when feeling weak.

 

 

I couldn't be more proud of doing this. Not just the photos though definitely that too. But of this, this life with this person and this willingness to grow, this forceful reaching toward it. And especially this pulling up each other by the hands and hair and heartstrings. 

 * * *

I promise to make photos of us in all manner of love and discontent and exploration and sensual pleasure and awkward silence and dank hotel beds and shoreline kisses and costume changes and coffeeshop bathrooms and blue toenails and new water bottles and 90s songs where we forget all the same lyrics and watching strangers' family dynamics from the window and forgetting where we parked and ruining watermelons and posing by mannequins and spitting in each other's mouths and falling asleep with one foot and one hand touching and petting all the dogs and making fun of babies and losing our hair and buying 42L suits and dancing against phone booths missing their phones and so much tango and no more white vehicles and the little hairs I can't unsee and the oatmilk and counting birds in the trees and panic that makes me hypercritical and abandonment that makes you avoidant and the silver linings that turn out to be not silver but grey and the rain that overtakes the rainbow and still the rain but also the sun and also the little crabs that make holes in the wet sand and me in a leopard bikini and you clawing at your matted hair and the poems the poems the poems and the yesterday and the today and the fearlessness to not just consider tomorrow but to want it, to not be scared of it, to know its loss is inevitable but to run headhandheart first toward it anyway. 

 Not just anyway but because.