The Distance Between Shutter and Release

Three polaroids scattered
like prayer cards on cotton—
each frame a door
I cannot walk through
but must.

The water knows
what the camera
cannot hold: how light
becomes longing,
how distance
dissolves in silver halide.

I press my palm
to the photograph's surface,
still warm from development,
and suddenly—
I am kneeling
at the river's mouth,
moss soft beneath
my borrowed knees.

In the blurred edges
of what was captured,
I find what was lost:
the exact temperature
of afternoon air,
the way water
speaks in tongues
I almost understand.

Tonight, these images
arrange themselves
like stepping stones
across my bedsheets—
each one a small bridge
between who I was
at the water's edge
and who I am
learning to become
in this fluorescent room
where rivers exist
only in the space
between shutter
and release.