I keep thinking of extricating myself.  From a realm of thorns. Claustrophobic.  

I keep thinking of going out, by alleyways and streets, into roads that run on into highways.  Out into the country and far to the south, where not so many people live.  

And I think about finding the water at night, lapping at the shore and the inky blackness.  And no voices, no people talking. Just the quiet, and the waves’ gentle caress.  

I keep thinking that something is wrong.  As though a clock knew it wasn’t telling the correct time, or that someone had forgotten to wind it.  

And instead of moving itself to tell the correct time, going out into the country and staring into water, far from the sound of other clocks.  

I wonder how a photographer could take himself out of a picture.  It’s not so much myself there as it is traces of what I am.  

Less than a picture of a broken clock, it’s the footprint of a broken clock.  And the shadow it casts. That gloomy pall, jutting into and overcoming the frame.  

I want to say I never liked being photographed.  But as a kid I could handle it sometimes. The older I got, the less happy I became with the way I looked.  

And I always felt like it was something that someone would use against me.  Just a picture, but there’s this weight to it. 

Draped over your shoulders like a yoke, or around your neck like a penance.  Bowing your head like a source of guilt, or shame.  

I was never that person who really cared about his looks.  Or at least, not when I was younger.  

If I see them – people I could get to know, on the subway or in the street -they will pass by.  Like ghosts. Locked into paths their footsteps follow.  

If I’m programmed too, surely I wouldn’t know as much.  My footfalls are as much a mystery to me as them.  

Unless I’m the ghost.  Something lingering on.  A bit of dew clinging at a thread.

Utterly insignificant.  Breathe and I might turn to vapor.

I keep thinking about time.  And how I won’t own a watch or a clock.  

And time moves by like a leaden river, slow, powerful, and all-consuming.  

Wherever it goes, whatever happens.  

Broken and telling no time.