Click
I watch them as they sit across from one another, on their respective chairs, facing each other as if they were each other's mirrors. L overcomes the distance, gripping R's chin softly between two fingers, pulling her head forward. Closer. Gently, gentle, gentler; they both ooze gentleness. Their faces are inches apart and their eyes are locked - the key forgotten at the bottom of a nearby lake that is said to be bottomless - as L starts applying lipstick the exact shade of red that roses have at the peak of summer to R's lips. Fragile curves and vibrant shadows, her lips take on the form of the bridges in one of Monet's waterlily pond images. Her mouth is sensually left open - ajar, like a door to a forbidden but tempting place - and I can almost feel her breath ghosting across my own cheek in the same way it must be ghosting across L's. Fumbling, I search the floor for my camera and clutch it between numb fingers. It obstructs my vision and becomes my second eye. I see everything. Through it. Click. The moment where L's lips curl into a half-smile, her eyes narrowing in a show of intimate fondness and she leans in to let her own glossed lips pull a purer, lighter hue of pink-filtered softness across the darker, more fatal colour of R's hard-breathing mouth forever captured on the lens. They are silhouette and reflection, neither just one, but both one and the other. In my memory, their eyelids closed over warm laughter.