An overexposed world
The sky is greyed over with cotton ball clouds giving the light this overexposed effect, sort of sepia without the brown tone. Walking through the park this morning everything had that sense of existing within an old time photograph. As we were midway into the park, I saw a leafless tree with seven ink black cormorants perched on the branches, their ropey necks slung low giving them a snake-like appearance even out of the water. Down below a giant snow white swan shook a tail feather as it glided across the still water. A man was coming from around the bend, hidden by foliage at first so I couldn’t see who it was. It was the Bayou Stone Fox, his charming dimpled smile the first recognition. He stopped me and took his earphones out and said, “they must have cleared out the back lagoon, look how beautiful” – and it was, some workers had been through and removed all the gnarly Katrina limbs and dead branches and now it opened up an expanse in the back of the water that created a view to the other side.
As I came around the back, I thought about the BSF, the first person who caught my attention after all the major breakups of a few years ago. He still has his sweet smile, but not the same cache he once held in my imagination when I began my walks around the bayou. I thought about the man I now see every morning walking with his hand weights – he greets me with a big smile no matter how cold, how hot, how early, how late it is – he saw me walking with T the other morning, my arm slung low around her waist, hers around my shoulder and I saw him look twice, and I thought it was a scowl, a frown, or maybe just surprise register on his face.
We are all here, overexposed, in this small world of ours – I can see the swan’s feet furiously kicking underneath the cool glide he maintains, can see that the BSF smiles and is generous with his thoughts of beauty when he is not threatened by me, and my fellow walker belies his imaginings of who he believed I could be and now his readjustment registers clearly on his face – and my smile, what Senem saw in my eyes the other day, what Beth sees in my face, what my mother says is telling on me, informs the world everything without my saying a word.