carbon by carbon.

Shifting the focus, your face or the backdrop. Your eyes or Geary Street. Pressing the silver button, the shutter clicks. So definitive. Etched on film forever. The camera falls from my eye and I feel your hands reach for me. The saving of a memory, the preservation of a moment you may have already forgotten. Your lips thank me in a way your words never could, never did, never even attempted to do.

The photograph didn't print correctly, the whole roll of film disappeared into space. Memories I thought I had forever never even existed without the proof of pictures.

I am a blank sheet of paper. I am not waiting to be colored in, to be scribbled all over. I am simply living, simply meeting people I don't care a thing about, simply smiling because I know everyone else wants me to. I don't want those photographs. I don't want you. I am glad that those photographs never even developed. They have been erased. Now if I could just erase the way you held my hand for the first time, how you laughed when you carried me down the steps of that old mansion falling to pieces, the memory of your breath bouncing off of the cold cold water, shivering, scared, quiet, clumsy.

I think somewhere I have hope that I will have laughter with someone that will filter down the staircase and fill up the living room.

But right now, my advice for myself and anyone that cares about me is not to bother trying. I let myself be vulnerable because he told me to. I refuse to take anyone's advice anymore. I have never felt this way before because I have never found something so uncomplicated and easy and I have never let my guard down so fully. And now I know that I will never do it again. Nothing is uncomplicated. Nothing is easy. Nothing is perfect. Nothing is worth compromising yourself.

Now, I am off to yet another night of shallow parties, filled with people I don't care to get to know, flashes of the past, and then quick attempts to erase it all with the present.

And I am done with the melodrama for today.