Poetry by Mathew Fu
Art by Alanna Wu
Flash of years lost to aberration:
of you cradling a camera, the lens smooth but sodden
in your palm for a fifth-grade photography project.
Flash of stepping-stone aperture: the grass fields
grainy in resolution, dusted with daisies, water-balloon skins
and the memories of footprints in snow.
I am sifting through the seasons, but the show replays,
shutter-stuck in sepia tones. The exposure turned too bright
to discern your inversion on the monkey bar in this
rule-of-third; I am reeling with all those recess rules we blurred
before we burdened. Flash of undercover areas promising safety: the shot
still with hopscotch chalk frosted over our shadow-puppet plays.
The petrichor filter fogs before the watermark, before learning how
we could exhale and overlay childhood. Flash of golden ratios sleeted between
ourselves and the frame: all our golden years glossy
and glistening with saturation. But remember that nothing
golden stays: the T-shirt graphics flaking before fading,
before assembly-line photo days melt into monochrome.
The same worn-out tee plasters onto albums rendering
we’ll never grow old into film—its contrast developed
as we relive the livestream in grayscale. You are still waiting for me
to vignette our life on display, the close-up caught
in slow-motion: flash of pixels shimmering in the rain.
The camera blazes, albeit briefly:
our eyes glassy and our smiles,
gaudy, are still gleaming.