..:j e s s e:..

Jesse

It was hard to walk through the woods, over
fallen trees and decomposing leaves, so black
with decay that they cast a pungent shadow
on the ground. I got lost in the flurry of rights
and lefts, but you followed me with the camera
while the other guys led the way to the bridge they built.

The flimsy planks were held up by a boulder, built
to connect one side of the woods over
to the other. You jumped and almost dropped the camera
into the creek that surged beneath it, running with black
water that interweaved though stones and pebbles, right
around the boulder and into the shadows.

I loved how you stood behind me, your face cast in shadow,
with the trees towering above us, seemingly built
around you, as if you were one of them. It felt so right
to look at you, stopping every now and then to glance over
my shoulder. The lens was inches away, black
against the paleness of your face, hidden by the camera.

I wondered why you had to be so camera
shy, why you let yourself be overshadowed
by the rest of us, especially the boy with the black
hair. Couldn’t you see that what he’d built,
he’d torn down? Everything I’d felt was over
before it started. I thought it was right

out in the open. You should have known it was all right
to let yourself feel, to step in front of the camera’s
lens, to be exposed. You could have dragged yourself over
to your darkness again, to hide in its sinuous shadows
if you didn’t like it—you could reconstruct your walls, built
to keep your heart from charring black

like mine, and his. But we plunged into the blackness
of the trees instead, leaving things alone, right
where we’d left them. You crossed the bridge they built,
made it across without dropping the camera
into the wretched stream. We stayed in the shadow
of the woods and your fears until our walk was over.

I’d like to take that camera and throw it over
the line he built between us, and make it all right
to love outside his blackened world, outside the shadows.