by Emily Wiginton
I. Call me Nikon
Standing stark in a sunless parking lot,
a streetlight that cast shadows over and under
We became skeletons in dress clothes,
in heels and dresses, ties and loafers
As you crouched, beautifully clothed and concentrated,
Eye to a camera, lips parted.
I stood back and watched, watched
Your lens-cap pressed into the palm of my hand.
It was one of those moments where,
even in a literal, lateral, linear sense,
Everything had become metaphorical.
I watched your Indian eyes, natural, behind the lens of that Nikon
And willed myself to melt into black plastic.
To become a viewfinder, a lens,
To preside over your lips and face,
To discreetly hang around your neck and rest against your torso.
Call me Nikon, if it means being close to you.
II. Fear/love
Now, more than anything, I am mostly just thankful for words.
You said something that struck me as beautiful and strange and thoughtful, as though you’d pulled it right out of the atmosphere of our dark-parking-lot setting. You always had this way mixing your vocabulary with eloquence, with simple pears-on-toast undertones and expressive eyebrows.
“You know,” you mused, climbing in the truck behind me and closing the door, “I read somewhere that people who become writers often write about what scares them the most, like, as a way of dealing with their demons.” It was out-of-context; purposefully so- like snow-covered pine-needles on shag carpet.
As we drove down Alabama highways that night, I kept one hand on our light conversation and the other on what you had said. I thought about the relationship between what I write about and what scares me, and I realized that sometimes, that’s so spot on. It made me think about how maybe I write about you because I’m scared. I’m scared of not always being a part of this strange, backseat-of-a-pickup-truck friendship- afraid of its inevitable and ultimate end. I thought maybe I wrote only about what I could put down in ink; what was tangible- something to preserve this epitomical platonic caring.
I worried about this development all the way into the next morning, when I woke up and realized the real reason I write about you. Not because it’s love, fear, or fear of love, for that matter. It’s because of nights like those- when you’re tired and I’m tired and we become each other- like a mirror and its reflection.
