Darkroom

In time your sight adjusts to the red light and you become efficient in your subterranean cocoon of plastic film spooled into canisters of bitter chemicals that will wash the silver from the frames, fade in still lives and candid glances, Suzy’s dark eyes a bright white in their negative reflections; the timer unspools twenty minutes in one acrid bath, 5 minutes of fixer, 5 more of tepid water to clean away the harsh emollients. 

Down the bench you draw the bellows of the enlarger to their full height, center the negative on the glass and turn the crank to find the right focal length; a pristine white (though pink in the forever evening of the darkroom) 8x10 of matte photographic paper is pulled from the familiar yellow and red of the Kodak envelope.

You can study her here for as long as you like, imagine her furtive glance was meant for you and not simply that she’s just noticed her photo was being taken. Somehow in black and white her eyes are even darker, deeper, more perfectly in focus from just that moment in time.

It’s the same, of course, for a hundred other candids: a volleyball forever hovering in the air before being served, a table full of self-conscious freshmen in the cafeteria, the irascible chemistry teacher everyone both loved and feared stop-motioned mid-lecture for the yearbook’s posterity.

But it’s her eyes, her slightly bemused smile, the tiny gap in her teeth that you can’t escape or explain in the way it moves you. She’s of course not in your league, didn’t even exist before she transferred into your school district over the summer between your shared sophomore and junior years…

You’ll find that picture, years upon years later in a box with a handful of others you’d kept from back then, and you’ll be able to study her there for as long as you like, imagine her once more in color in the autumn of 1985: chestnut hair, a blue and white drill team skirt, both of you seventeen again or nearly, the wide eye of your camera preserving that momentary smile for the second she looked your way as you fired the shutter and burned her beauty indelibly into time -- what was and will be forever frozen.