things related to this photograph (fragments)

courtesy ghetto blaster

POSSIBLE TITLES FOR THIS PHOTO:

____- you're late
____- things that happened outside my window while i stayed in bed because i had nothing to do on sunday morning
____- fall autumn fall
____- where you are and i'm not
____- slow, silent;
____- promises i failed to keep
____- i remember it because it rained that day
____- wonderland
____- the persistence of history
____- four invisible figures and the bus is on time
____- please god, please
____- we are also what we have lost

STORIES INVENTED TO EXPLAIN SAID PHOTOGRAPH:


____i.
and we'll meet
yes we'll meet
there, we'll meet there
yes, there. exactly
right.
and when we do-
________when we do everything will be alright.
all. right.
right; like drawers that slide nicely on their rails.
are we really gonna do this?
we already have. this is the way we're remembering it.


____ii.
by my second year of university i was fully depressed. like an anachronistic vitelloni i sat everyday besides the plastic drop-sheet of the outdoor cafeteria, watching droplets of rain take aim at my face and get as close as the width of the plastic sheet. i drank hot chocolate and read. and wrote. and at the end of the day, all wet tables and chairs, and the color of the cement almost shiny, i'd be the last to leave. and i'd leave. and no one would have noticed either way. that's what it was. those were the times.


____iii.
it is your city now. completely. you have made it home and owned it and taken all those steps people take as life moves (forward). if it is a place i land one day, there will be no confusion: i was late. you did what you had to do. you got to the line, and won, and are the embodiment of happiness. i'm something that lurks in your past, and no doubt, you keep off to one side like soo many of your secrets. and when i walk, i'll keep my eyes planted to the ground in front of me, out of reverence.


____iv.
the water makes puddles and rivers of everything. it is genesis everyday for ants and ladybugs. colors are different, and the sky exhales an ocean. whole futures are made in moments like these. silently. during quiet afternoons. in private little rooms, with second-hand furnishings and too many clothes on the ground. people's lives exist in those spaces. and as time decidedly moves forward, the people in those spaces are reduced to phantasms and ghosts and memories and back into solid shapes and end in words without meaning all at once. futures lost and found that we'll never even look up to notice.