Chapter 3: Halfway to Sight & On Looking Back

 Photograph by Ali Scattergood, Halfway to Sight, 2013

On Looking Back

because light is the syntax of a photograph

and a photograph is no more/no less than a sketch of dreams

and dreams are the language that we never had to learn

and language is the tongue’s way of dancing with the mind

and dancing is a daisy chain of fancy footwork

and your feet are soft lambs that bring you toward me

and bring is a word that has ring in it like a bell

and bells are the herald of our entry into this world

and our entry is also our exit from elsewhere

and your exit is bathed in a halo of light

--Lisa Rosinsky

Chapter 2: Liminal Light & Flight

Photograph by Ali Scattergood, from series Liminal Light. 2013

Flight

When you came to me all gossamer

with the light shining through you

and invited me into the sky, I didn’t

hesitate. Golden-haired, feather-

flanked, I flew like the beast

I never knew I’d always been.

When you laughed the night shivered.

Breath steaming out of my nostrils

like clouds scudding across the night,

hair full of star-smoke, I thought

we’d turn the ocean to steam

when we landed on the shore.

Who are you? I asked, and

where are we? for I knew this land

was not my own. In response,

you let me hold you one last time,

and then there was nothing

in my hands but light, leaping

from my fingers like a necklace

of hot coals,  and I was nothing

but shadow cloaked in shadow,

under stars.

- Lisa Rosinsky

Chapter 1: I am who am & Girl, Adrift

Photography by Ali Scattergood, series I am who am 2012

Girl, Adrift

She had been floating in darkness so long
that when the ball of light bobbed across

her path she clung to it, though it was larger

than her body, held it to her flat belly

and resolved to incubate it until it hatched

something that would speak her language.

The light had no heat, in fact it seemed

to drain something from her, more like

a snowball than a sun, but she wrapped it

in her thin arms and thought comfort

although it burned her skin with a noise

like the soft hissing of water over rocks.

Would it beget other globes, a galaxy

perhaps, her own private universe?

She had never heard of such eggs

but she had nothing to lose; it was this

or the darkness, alone. They say now

it has become impossible to distinguish

between them: star and girl, girl and star.

- Lisa Rosinsky