daguerreotype

I've been looking so long at these pictures of you
That I almost believe that they're real
I've been living so long with my pictures of you
That I almost believe that the pictures are all I can feel

-The Cure

He stumbled upon a picture of her...like encountering her on a sunny side of the street...full daylight and there she was...instantaneous...unfiltered.  

Endorphins, as though the plunge of a needle of adrenalin was suddenly inserted directly into his mind.  And every closeted and dusted emotion spilled out of the drains in his mind and flooded...it was almost painful in the poignancy of his dust-bin world piling upon itself in a matter of seconds...

Her.

The dismal secret is that she remained so photogenic in his memories...and remained so with the proof in the picture...a casual pirate-smile that resembled the crescent moon in a sunrise...a sky the color of dreamsicle...a taste he had never possessed but only imagined.

Until it happened.  

The briefest of encounters, an exception that proves the rule...the reason songs are written and poems mouthed.

A tussle, if you will, a coming together.  An earnestness...a revealing.

But in the collision of humans it was disruptive...it jarred a bit of him to wander free...a tiny piece that had been a part of him prior and was now in the wake of her in an afterwards...floating in a bloodstream and unable to capture or return.  

It infiltrated his dreams...and in certain songs.  The memory of her smudged upon him like a surreptitious bit of lipstick stolen at a party kiss...and it wouldn't come off despite valiant attempts.  

All he knew was when her image appeared in the picture he was unprepared for his response...the sudden  stoppage of his breathing and the heavy cluster in his chest.  

He think she was satisfied with him...in an unexpected way...not like a stranger but rather as a familiar...a comfort who she could confide in, allow herself to immerse and connect at an unvarnished level...no pretense...just presence and a moment or two.  Alone.

Flint like.  Sparks and such.

Not usually experienced and unexpected...

The way Civil War portraits captured an image but couldn't quite capture the person...he carried her image and reacted to her picture knowing full well it would never be adequate to quite capture her.