When I think of us, I see us as a grayscale photograph, sitting on a bench at an empty German train station, amid four suitcases and four shopping bags, posing – so as we’re not posing – for multiple photographs to be taken by a self-timed camera perched atop the fifth suitcase, which, throughout the trip, will slowly deteriorate to eventually burst open at the final destination.
I see us as another, softer, photograph that caught us mid-laughter in a temporary home at a French town, rows of teeth exposed, bodies intertwined, heads leaning in different directions, explanatory wine glasses in our hands, cheese and bread platters in the foreground, mood inviting but exclusive.
I think of how these photographs have been singled out from the rest of their series, how they have been edited, straightened, desaturated, posted, reposted, memorized. I think of our faces, representative without intending to be – or was that, too, deliberate?
Do we create the moments that define us intentionally, calculatedly?
If I always remember us engulfed in eternal laughter, strolling carefree along European city streets, drinking from a bottomless pit of wine and dancing to every tune in the world, where do the nights of existential starring into unfamiliar ceilings go? The truths foolishly concealed from a controversial conversation? The café-trottoir arguments over literary authenticity? The strangers in stranger beds who fail to provide a sense of intimacy? The strain of an ordinary life that reeks of inadequacy? The cheese allergy and wine intolerance at a night of cheese and wine?
When I think of us, I don’t know what to think.