meeralee

I am unsettling when I open my eyes

We tell ourselves we are merely witnesses, silently observing her as she observes herself. We know…we know…she is not looking at us. We exist only as tenuous wisps of passing thoughts. ‘Who will look at this? What will they think?’ We are less than ghosts, less than the shadows of ghosts. And yet this image is as much for us as for herself.

It matters little that she is not, and cannot be, looking at us; we still feel the full weight of her gaze. We are drawn in, we are pushed away, we are given hope, we have our hope taken from us, we are lifted and crushed and born again and burnt in flames…and she doesn’t know we’re there, doesn’t know, doesn’t even know.

Because she’s not looking at us.

Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work