12 July 2021
At the top of the
circle at the back of the cemetery, flush up against the Ko`olau, two
young women pose for photographs. One stands in their black rented jeep, head
and torso thrust through the sun roof, arm ending in a shaka. A young
man who’d just taken a photo of his own shadow, stops to take them together. His father, walking a thin light dog farther
downhill, talks on the phone about a film being made about Kalaupapa,
“the leper colony.” Harry walked in circles last night in Anne’s
living room, not as tightly coiled since he got Dramamine. His body began to
quiver, tail pushed between his legs, ears falling to the
sides like a Papillon’s. Tottering a bit, he paced to the end of
the hallway and back; “lights on but nobody there,” said Sangha later. We sat around the room, our eyes directed toward the dog at the center, his dementia eyes. There was a light
circle in the young man’s shadow. The poet who takes photos of
shadows must recognize the necessity of light, even as he calls his
work a study of shadows. Tell them their stories are their own, my
friend says, that they don’t have to take on the others. There are
moments of rest in the illness; you grow accustomed to its
circles, frayed at the brush’s end where time bleeds like a
leaky water bottle. Look at the splashes of light, the way shadows
deepen the light, render it like an eye open to brick or sidewalk or
construction shed. A yellow helmet sits on top of a rusty
refrigerator. A sun-dimmed sign includes the word “safety."
Nearby, a blue plastic cover has the word HOPE on it, even if it’s
HDPE. I can’t tell, so I choose the first, pencilling in my small
circle, looking for white spaces where no questions or answers
are. Bryant hopes Harry quickly gets better, or worse.
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