Beyond Which

The Irish photographer at the cocktail party I crashedhad a small camera over his shoulder like a compact purseand gave me his card which pointed me toward his website

where the portrait section was filled with women, small-breasted, naked, looking pointedly at the camera or him orboth, smiling in their eyes but not their lips, unashamed

of their bodies, their breasts, their cunts, though the wordcunt or even pussy sounds too violent for his artistic pictures,the models' furred triangles sometimes obscured by hands

or folds of sheets. The camera captures forms withoutjudgment—with light and an open shutter—with shadowand bent angles, the exact way a specific body part

(curved elbow, erect cock, hollowed collarbone) catchestime to repeat in image: a hook snagging a thread, pullinguntil we unravel into a new form—not reduced, but changed—

a place beyond which—a trace, exalted. Beyond whichis a place I would not go, but I went because you asked.Because you asked, I sent low-res dioramas of body

and bedroom, selfies encased in windowsill sun,each message another part of me, another lit bandof flesh, the way one might capture every space

in an open-plan house from different angles beforea broker puts it on the market. We part with everythingeventually, though some things return to us unbidden.

There is a disconnect, surely, between past and presentbut I don't see it. If someone else looked at a photofrom now, and another from back then, they might say

we've done some hard living and that would be accurate.The only image that's the same in these photos you've sent,I've sent, is our ink: the skin drinks what it needs,

swallows lines and whole bodies in an attempt to fillthe hole left by what? A city sidewalk sometimes glittersin the dark or is pockmarked with gum black as tar,

broken by delicate fissures running the lengthof the block. This is the crack we fall into where timeholds its breath under water for the full expanse

of the murky East River. Should I tell you aboutmy rib cage? How it's expanded with age and loveto cradle my enormous, porous heart? When I confess

that my body is shifty, you say you want to lickevery shifting inch, which is lovely, but what I meanis that my body is formless, terra nullius,

a permeable membrane, a moon palace—and beyond which is the place we remain,folding and unfolding together like a flower,

a pocket knife, a tangled heap of film whenwe still used film, pulled from the canister,felt—emulsive—skinlike—exposed (to the light).