Litany for a Safelight Hear the choir’s chords thrum the floor as she shuts the door, stuffs towel to the threshold, and the room turns dark as plum-wine, only the red safelight blooming — a low planet, a heart. Trays wait like open mouths, chemicals breathing ether, each basin penciled: Fiat, Flight, Negation, Pieta— small sepulchres where emulsion decides what refuses to stay invisible. Feel paper pass between black tongs, host-white, lowered into tincture that swirls indigo when she turns her wrist. Timer ticks, ruthless metronome for prayer; she lets it overrun, lengthens the vigil, because some wounds ripen slowly. Outside, the world hammers for proofs on the grille; inside, fatigue pools violet beneath her eyes, silver stains her fingers in crescent moons where a ring once rested... See the submerged sheet answer, a hand surfacing from the blue-black, reaching before language, asking before blessing. For an instant I, the negative, behold her: face fractured in the metal tray, yes and terror braided in amber glance. She nearly slaps the switch, almost floods us with hallway ochre, but her heel presses the towel back into place, and in this chosen not-yet the cosmos holds still, images slow drip along the line, unseen, already looking out at whoever dares look in...
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Poem in Alt Text
Litany for a Safelight
