Exposure Gin Faith Thomas

2018 By Laura D’Alessandro

Exposure

Gin Faith Thomas

Lucy used to love Nicholas Photoclub President, trailed him through the art department fog of clay dust, glittering stained glass scraps, smell of kilns firing up, graphite, hot erasures twisting off the paper. Sometimes she’d wait

in the darkroom, overexposing prints, shots she’d snapped of leaves cut through with daylight, long twists of country road, pumpkins sagging together in a row. Everything comes out too dark, grim and fiercely grey, reliefs chipped into headstones. She waited so long

for Nicholas but he always kept his gaze down like all the floors in hallways were trays of solvent, images slow-emerging for only his dark eyes – Lucy used to love his caterpillar neck, his photosensitivity, skin glowing in the darkroom’s brake light.

Then she saw Teddy Quarterback coursing the field at dusk, running with the sprawled out snaps of animals, dodging grasping arms, leaping over the white lines

so like a rabbit. Lucy panted. Now she sneaks every week under the bleachers to watch the tight white ripple of his uniform, ready tremble of his thighs, cutting scent of torn grass, his big digit shrinking as he sprints away.