Ingrith Deyrup-Olsen

Most of us will end up inside a box
or scattered, sprinkled and given to the mist.
Maybe if we're lucky we'll die an interesting death
or enigmatically
never be found
Sometimes after we're gone
we can be found again
visited again
missed again
even by people we haven't known.

I found you in America
in Seattle
in an old waterfront warehouse
in a fascinating junk shop
in a boring white cabinet
in a large white drawer.
Such an unassuming casket
such an invisible mausoleum
of the departed
the dead
living within
trapped within
recorded within
hundreds of black and white photographs.

A drawer of the deceased, discarded and forgotten.
Pictures of pretty faces
sad faces
some scary faces
young and old faces
places
with snow
sea
cars that were owned by old faces
with old hair
and old clothes.
Weddings
anniversaries
holidays
birthdays
but no funerals.
But then these were all photographs of funerals.
Rescued from deceased estates,
the photographs wait for the living
the curious living to spend some time with them.
Stay with them awhile.

And in that drawer, I found a photograph
of a lady with a loving face

a happy face
a curious face.
You were a professor
a zoologist
a lover of life
and encourager of science and students.
You liked slugs
and studied slugs
I like banana slugs
I wish we could have met properly
as I have many annoying banana slug questions.

But photographs can't really talk.
They just exist to eventually remind us that the dead once existed.
That these paper people were once flesh
and had dreams that spread far beyond a junk shop drawer.
Beyond my hands.

One day,
If I am lucky,
my photograph might reside inside a drawer.
Where I can be visited by new people.
And they will witness old events for the first time.
My life

an age
in photographs.
before my life was recorded in data.
I'm afraid that hard drives and memory sticks don't attract the curiosity of the passer-by
like the immediacy of photographs
of long-dead people

in drawers
in junk shops
in warehouses
in Seattle.