I look for the bodies of people I love or have loved
in photographs posted on the Internet by our friends
and those who are friend-adjacent, for want of a better term;
I am not one of those who believe that photographs
capture the souls of those being photographed, and I
thank all the myriad gods of a plethora of religions for that;
I could not bear it if that were to be true, thinking
of our deep affections still haunting those imprisoned in paper
and ink or in pixels and sparks, ready to go dark in an instant;
but still there is this small hope that perhaps one of these snaps
will stir a feeling in me that I do not find easy to reach on my own,
that an image of a known body will tweak me in the soul
and push my empathy out front from where it hides
in a pocket made of armor I keep tucked close to my belly;
that the image of a body I love and respect and care for
might remind me of the days when I felt that
for what once rode within my own body, what I pray
is still there, raging at me from inside this shell, crying out
that there is love and hope and joy and risk-affection
still in the world, that pain and weakness are what a body must yield to
but the spirit inside need not ever yield;
I seek for images of bodies I have known
hoping they miss me, the me I was when they knew my body
and saw it and welcomed me for what I was inside,
the me I do not know now though I am in the same body
I have had for all my time, the me that has changed
from how it once was, the me that feels like it has slipped away.
