it was my camera that took
the picture of you with his
manly curves molding
your arm, and
my hand that shot you both
with the flicker of a lens
i was in that picture, too,
beyond the three dimensions
compressed into a 4x5 glossy
flypaper fantasy. you never asked
me to create it for you, but i heard
someone asking me- it was a
voice i'd never heard before, but
when i heard him whispering to
you as i stood behind my tiny
wall of negatives, i remembered
who.

you couldn’t stop your voice from
wavering as you told me how
the photograph gravitated
to your hand, and how you
tore it in half, and almost
burned it- you couldn’t find
any matches
then you collapsed into
your phone and i cradled
the sound of your aching
words, feeling a pain in
some unidentifiable place
when i realized that you
had ripped me.