Chiaroscuro

Shadows ran across your skin like live paint
and my envy hurt. Other shadows on the walls,
cast carelessly, more beautiful than their curled iron gates,
stretched and finally left. I tried to believe
that a crack crawling across the ceiling
was just an instant in the grandest scheme.

Fenton's film was just imperfect enough
to join the double castle in the moat
seamlessly to the souls of this world,
and my envy hurt. The paper had its own life, a hand
in our artful half-truths. He let the sky expose.
The longer we wait the more the land we know
grows dark as night around our feet
and swallows our faces, then, even our silhouettes.

Strange that we should care where the light falls
or ask it to stay. Usually, it moves across the room
picking up one object then the next
as if remembering in the same order day after day.

In another frame, the light fell permanently
through skylights onto ancient heads, stuck in stone,
but without warming their ears or lighting their chests.
The pain of movement stops with death.

I'd use perfect film for this that takes no say in the world
and I wouldn't expose the scene until the light goes out.
My prints aren't finished yet, but when they are,
I'll send you one where two people are holding hands,
but you can't tell, because I've taken pictures of their feet.