The Photograph

Shoreditchpoet
2 min readFeb 3, 2024

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The Photograph

“They made love, there on the studio floor,” she whispered,

The gallery crowd cackle fading under the ice of her breath.

I looked at the photograph.

“They say the photographer let it happen. Well, true passion cannot be controlled or left unchecked right?”

Outside,

Old Street drowned in

white noise

Her scent – a pyroclastic

crustation volcanic

crawled onto my shoulder, wrapped around my neck, weaved into my beard.

“They were inseparable for three months and then…”

I glanced to the side, not meeting her eyes – she wouldn’t want that – just catching the incline of her breasts as she inhaled.

“Then?” I asked

“Then, just like that,”

(she clinked our glasses)

“She was gone.

Some say she was married and went away to end it. Others say she rode a Ducati out West until she reached the Badlands – abandoned it in the parking lot of a motel,

then hitch hiked back.”

“Is she here to stay?”

I asked, looking again at the photograph -

her face as she was that day -

“You know better than to ask such things,” she said.

She then held her wine to my lips.

I sipped, she then kissed me.

And someone took a photograph of us

The reunited lovers –

someone laughed -

In the foreground and background

Of nowhere

Shoreditchpoet

Photograph by V Vertov.

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Shoreditchpoet

Local poet/writer. ‘There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.’ E. Hemingway. All ©️DMM