Three Frames, One Answer

August eleventh.

Here is the arithmetic: three photographs, same block, same light, same gray sidewalk with the crack running diagonally across the lower left corner. I showed them to Simone on the little screen at the back of the camera. She pointed at the middle one before I finished the sentence I was using to set up the question.

I already knew it was the middle one. I knew when I was still crouching on the sidewalk, squinting at the concrete. I took the other two anyway, before and after, bracketing it, because I wasn't sure I trusted myself to know. And then I showed Simone, I think, not because I needed a second opinion but because I needed to confirm that the opinion I already had was real. She gave me that in about half a second and then said something about being hungry and we walked to the corner place and got sandwiches and the conversation moved on entirely.

She didn't know I took this one.

The camera is on the windowsill now. Between the collapsed bowl and the letterpress card and Gerald's trailing vine. I didn't put it there on purpose, I set it down when I came in and it just ended up there, and then I looked at the arrangement and left it.

It just lives there now.

I think that's the end of the question. Not because I answered it, exactly, but because I stopped needing to ask it out loud. I have a preferred direction of light and a block I've photographed three times and a friend who will point at the right frame without ceremony. That seems like enough to keep going.