Nine. Black Hole

He wants to go up onto the motorway bridge and take photos. He has convinced me this will be a good way to kill a few hours. I watch the cars go by underneath us. He sets up the camera for a long exposure. He is only trying to capture the light. When he shows me the first of his pictures, there is a road in the dark and there are lines of red and white lights where the cars have been. I understand. He presses the button and the shutter opens and stays open. Everything has to be still for a long time. He smiles at me as the light is going into the camera. We can see the cars, but the camera is telling lies. The camera doesn’t see the cars, the shape of them. I like the pictures he makes. I like seeing where the cars are going to, coming from. I like that the cars are invisible. He tells me I can be invisible, too, if I want to be. He tells me that all I have to do is move very fast, and hold a light of some kind, like a torch or a flash or a lighter. It is that easy.

I want to be invisible. I want him to take a photograph of me and me not be in it. I want to be captured like that, and know that it is all lies. In the photograph, I will be smiling, but only I will know that. All there will be is a shape that I will draw with his lighter. I will feel like I am the darkness where a star used to be. I will feel like a black hole.