She Won't Let Me Take Pictures of Her

I turn the camera toward her and she puts a hand up.

“Please don’t.”

It is more than just a demure objection.

Once upon a time, in a land faraway, she blinked at me patiently as I adjusted Super-8s and pushed the buttons on Nikons and wondered if the Diana in my hand had been centered enough to keep her blue eyed gaze in focus (you never knew with those things until you got the 120 film back from the lab). Whenever we saw a photo booth she would pull me in for a smooch and a snap.

Gone are those days, along with the pencil skirts and tall shoes. It’s become the rare night when she takes the eyeliner out just for me and rubs the gloss on the lips I loved to linger on so much under street lamps in New York.

Instead it is the palm forward and the splayed fingers. It is the turn of the head away. It is the silent mouthing of “Not now” that I can read through the smallest of apertures.

So now I do my best to capture her beauty through odd angles and zooms that make the background of the life we are in an indeterminate blob of could-be-anywhere-any-era.

I want to say, let me show you how I see you. Let me capture what I love. Your answer is always a head shake and an eye-roll. Or, if there’s company, a thin lipped aside: “You’re doing it again.”

I miss you, woman whose shoes click-clacked across the New York pavement to me. I am even angry about it.

Of course, when I look in the books that sit on the piano, I see that I am not who I once was either. There are pages of proof. Ghosts stare back at me. Teeth a little whiter. Hair less gray. No paunch to speak of. The eyes get me the most. No bags or dark lines. I seem untouched by the anxiety of a life full of questions.

Ugh. I hate this time of recognition.

I put my hand up and splay my fingers at myself: Please don’t.