whatlightdoes

[whatlightdoes]

"I was born with an open wound, and colors pouring from it. Don't call me brave or a martyr; I'm just a woman who learned to love even in the midst of pain. I am a brush, I am a scream, I am broken flesh and a burning spirit. I paint myself because I am the only thing I know with fury, with tenderness. And if anyone doesn't like it, don't look at me, because I didn't come to fit in, I came to be."

~Frida Kahlo

[whatlightdoes]

FRAGMENTS FROM THE LOST CENSUS

The boy with the spoon tongue asked if our names still burned. His mother said Yes, but only in lowercase. We hadn’t seen the lake since it borrowed our mirrors.

There were three kinds of light that year: emergency, supermarket, and father. We folded all three into the lining of a stolen crib.

Someone mailed god a baby tooth and never got it back. The return address was just a bruised shoulder and a song about mowing the lawn.

My sister bit her prayers into the bar of soap we weren’t allowed to use. She said cleanliness is a place you leave, not a thing you become.

A fish in the neighbor’s driveway had my brother’s voice. It only sang during rain delay.

I used to have a secret name for grief. Now I just call it menu and let my son order from it.

The attic plays home video in reverse. That’s how we know who left.

Mom says don’t look at the moon if you’re bleeding. The dead are territorial. Dad replaced our dog with a dial tone. We fed it fingers.

Once, a tornado braided itself into the hair of our aunt. She said it made her feel seen. Her obituary was just coordinates and a taste.

When I’m tired, I sleep with both hands open. When I’m sad, I pour water into my mouth until I lose the century. When I’m honest, I tell the baby: you were never the first wind to believe it could stay.

The moths think my spine is a circuit. I let them try.

[whatlightdoes]

Edgar Allan Poe, from The Complete Tales & Poems; “The Man That Was Used Up,”

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Edit after Maurice Boudet de Paris (Elektrische stroom tussen zes munten, c. 1876 - in or before 1886) (2) (Rijksmuseum) (Ed. Lic.: CC BY-NC 3.0)

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“To love is to undress our names.”

— Octavio Paz 

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“Eyes burn with a sacred darkness.”

——Anaïs Nin, from A Journal of Love, The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin 1934-1937

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Joy Sullivan, from “These Days People Are Really Selling Me On California”, Instructions for Traveling West

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Loving you quietly was both my comfort and my curse.

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"The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder. We should always endeavor to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be startled by the sun, and not by the eclipse. We should wonder less at the earthquake, and wonder more at the earth. What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a miraculous world."

[whatlightdoes]

Jan Lukas

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Fishermen’s daughters, Village of Los Horcones, Chile, Sergio Larrain, 1957

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Tarascon, France

Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1959

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… untitled (Hartlepool, County Durham, 1962)

© John Bulmer (b. 1938, British photographer)

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Ed Valfre, Downtown Los Angeles

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... untitled (Consett, County Durham, England 1970's)

© Don McCullin

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Charlotte Lapalus

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Natassja Kinski, Paris Texas, Wim Wenders, 1984