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I’LL LET YOU BE IN MY DREAMS, IF I CAN BE IN YOURS (2018 - 2023 )

It’s the fallen hatchlings at the doorstep that finally interrupt our argument. It looks as though someone has carefully laid the two birds on opposite sides of the crack in the concrete slab. We are staying in a casita a few hundred meters from the border between the United States and Mexico. Evening insects are swarming the fluorescent porch light, which casts our shadows over the scene. Our eyes cannot see beyond the rim of light, so in that moment our entire world is consumed by this drama. Entangled in our silences, we each take a turn with the camera, then disappear into the casita and into our separate thoughts and dreams.

In the morning, we dash along the sidewalks–you on your side, me on mine, watching as people cross the busy street. A rancher leaves the hardware store carrying a ring of copper over his shoulder; a woman totes her child and a vase of flowers as she turns the corner. We follow them before they disappear, convinced that they carry a piece of us with them. We ask the street crossers to pose how we think we saw them. What we see is not a whole or even a half, not fully mine or yours or theirs, but parts of each. Who made that photograph? And that one? What should it matter to us? Your dark bridge by my abyss. My shivering rose by your moonlight.

Ocotillos and prickly shrubs are in bloom along the dirt road that brings us to the river. The sun has set and a warm wind turns the reeds on the other side into a single oscillating whole. You wade across without telling me, disappearing into the dark waters. I hate you. I need you. A gust approaches from downriver and pushes between us, and then it’s silent again. Somewhere in the distance there is music playing out from someone’s garage. You call out to me, asking if I can hear it.