“I am searching for the person in this photograph”

It is worn, tattered on the corners: a drawing 

silhouette of pen-strokes, looking over
its shoulder. Face lost in the artscapes of stories- too many, lined up like a century of wrinkles, that almost obscure. Turning around mid-walk as if called, looking back, but never intending to stop. 

“But this is a drawing” 

–No doubt about that, the paper is rough 

to touch, no glossy film
of photographic prints– like the scraping sand of a familiar beard.
you can feel the indentations left by the pen-tip
where they make an impression from the artist’s hand
that left no fingerprints but perhaps something else
too raw – a stain of soul. which once spilled,
has no remedy to be rid of it – something like mango
but not yellow like that. only children are that colour,
when they start out. 

“I know 

but can’t you trace the shutterspeed
in all the moments that got trapped in it? 

“see here 

a ghost of the flash that went out
an exposure set just a little too low
enough to capture the realness of it. 

“and the frame 

of this mind this second this place–
captured. The most beautiful portraits
are the ones where the eyes
open into the soul. a kind of a
raw vulnerability
caught unprotected, comes out off guard,
sharper than daggers
to you who views.  

“That is what I am searching for”