There, You Are.

Remember this–

I grew up in a white house with black shutters. Two porch swings hung opposite one another, lined with floral cushions. My parents told us stories from their childhoods while we swung back and forth. Beyond the porch were endless woods and beside the house was a fort my father built, stretched with a bright blue tarp for a roof.

I remember how everything was arranged.

Stay there.

The swings looked into each other’s eyes with a nurturing respect. That is something I wrote about them years later.

I was sitting between them.

I admired these stories because they were so grand to me.

“I want to be just like that.”

The rain pattered the ground. The leaves rustled. There was a particular feeling to being there, and I have been trying to give it a surface.

I can still feel the wind embrace my neck.

You have a house now.

I gave you its color and something to sit on. The distance between the swings was yours to decide.

So was the weather, until I told you it was raining.

What happened to the sunlight you put there?

You can leave it. I won’t know.

Sometimes I recognize a picture before I know what I am looking at.

Something catches my attention. I stop. I look again.

I remember this.

There is a brief interval in which nothing belongs to me. The light continues. Someone moves through it. I could leave everything as it is.

Stay there.

I take a picture.

Later, I return to it and find something I don’t remember seeing.

It was there.

That is what the photograph seems to say.

It has become very convincing.

I cannot always remember why I stopped.

The photograph gives me an answer I did not know I was looking for.

My father built me a fort beside the house. A blue tarp made a roof.

I thought of it as my castle. The house was theirs.

From there I could survey the land, or climb down and disappear into the woods.

I watched over something that did not belong to me.

Good boy.

I learned that a briar bush would collect its token of blood if stumbled across blindly.

Bad bushes, I called them.

It was my wrong.

The woods and I engaged in a mutual negotiation of give and take. I shot them and they left me with their promise.

They caressed me and I loved them in return.

Where are you?

On the porch.

Two swings, opposite one another.

When I look through a camera, I decide where to stop.

Someone remains inside the frame. Someone close enough removed by its edge.

I can make a picture of us without including myself.

I can show you something intimate.

I can watch you look.

Look at me.

The same images flashed and reflected on the faces of those around me.

Nobody looked away.

I sat, curious. I was less interested in the images themselves than in what was happening to the people watching them.

My mother shifted her position and turned to me.

I was sent to play with my toys elsewhere.

You’ll be safe here.

There is a child outside the picture now.

You know where he went because I told you.

The people looking at the picture don’t.

I am telling you too much.

Time passed.

It passes differently now.

I return to the photograph.

Something I barely noticed has become its subject. What I meant to show you is still there, somewhere around it.

I move closer.

The image gets larger.

That isn’t the same thing.

I remember the stories being grand. I have kept that word and lost the sound of what was said.

Grand.

You may remember the cushions.

I haven’t mentioned them in a while.

Nothing has happened to them here. I have simply stopped giving them to you.

Do you still see flowers?

I re-encounter old photographs and am forced to comply with their new context.

The people in them do not know what happened afterward.

I arrive with that information every time.

Sometimes I find myself looking at someone who has not yet learned what I know.

They are still standing where I left them. The light is still touching their face.

Can you see me?

I want to tell them something.

There is nowhere in the photograph for the information to go.

They never turn around.

I stay a little longer.

I wish I could put some of it down.

A house.

A blue roof.

No—the blue belonged to the fort.

You knew that.

I can go back and check what I wrote.

It will be there, exactly as I left it. That is one of the things a record can do.

The moment is gone. I can still examine what it left behind.

Sometimes I find something I didn't know to keep.

Sometimes I find nothing of what I came looking for.

I remember this.

The swings face each other.

There is nobody in this sentence.

You put them there.

I return for information and find a feeling.

I return for the feeling.

Stay there.

“I want to be just like that.”

I remember wanting it.

Can you feel it?

I remember the swings.

There was room.

I remember sitting between them. I remember the distance.

There, you are.

I remember how everything was arranged.

Stay there.

I remember the house.

You have a house now.

I remember the cushions.

Do you still see flowers?

I remember the rain.

What happened to the sunlight?

I remember the woods.

I can still feel the wind embrace my neck.

I remember being there.

Stay there.

There was a place to sit.

There was someone speaking.

I was listening.

I understand this now.

I was there.

I understand this now.

There.

You’ll be safe here.

I can’t give you the whole experience back.

But I have given you something you can return to.

What color was the house?