BLUE PRINTS #3: The Latent Image

A late-night vignette

Even though he has left, our beer glasses are still sweating against each other on the table. Behind them, a floating candle wick dances on a dish of oil, licking the remaining liquid into life.

I think of his hands tracing shapes in the condensation earlier, the looping motion of his fingers, his skin wet with light, and from there, the image pulls into focus –

I wind the lever to advance the film in the camera. The glasses need to be framed slightly off-centre to catch the flickering candle behind. I stay still so that the slow shutter speed will turn the flame into a celluloid blur. One more from a lower angle, and then a wider shot of the table, almost consumed entirely by the negative space where his sketchbooks were moments before.

The pub is emptying out now, past last orders. He must have caught that last southbound train. I leave my drink, but press my lips to the smudge on his glass instead, finishing his beer. A trace of lipstick clings to the rim, and I push it right to the edge of the viewfinder, into the tightest framing, the lens too close to focus, a haze of spit on spit.

All night, I have been circling the outline of these images. I sensed their presence from the minute he sat down next to me. I felt their potential humming in the air and in the changing light, as if everything had taken on an electric charge – the way it does when a good photograph is around the corner. Once the first has been captured, the rest always seems to follow in a frenzy, rushing towards me, eager to be contained on the same roll. Each one an attempt to return to the accidental perfection of the first: his silhouette refracting through the glass door –

I shoot as if in a fever now. We didn’t even touch, but I can feel him coursing through me – his presence still echoes all around. Even the sheet across the leather sofa has held on to the outline of his body, of our bodies, fabric creased and crumpled like an unmade bed, still warm to the touch.