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By Sakura

 

 

She hates the camera. 

 

The camera will not leave her alone. 

 

It finds her even when she’s trying to squeeze herself behind a potted plant (or melt into a bowl of ice cream, or duck under a balloon, or disappear into a closet).  There you are, sugar.  It pokes lens in her face.  Lift your chin, there’s a good girl.  Her eyes sting (hold it, don’t move), and before she can turn away (that’s it) --- click. 

 

Another photograph down the drain. 

 

Six different views of the same pout arrive in a crisp white envelope the next day.  You have a permanent sulk, remarks her mother, half in amusement, half in frustration.  I wonder where you get it from.  The family album is already full, so her mother takes a book from the shelf, parts it in the middle, then slips the latest pout  between chapters. 

 

Years later she will thumb through the book, and somewhere between the sun dying and a man crooning a lullaby from his window, the photograph will slip out of its hiding place and fall at her feet --- the paper faded brown and its edges soft with dust, but the line of her lips still thin, still bitter.

 

 

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