Double Exposure

by
Kim Bromley

     The way you used to take pictures with your camera they call double exposure. Laying down on a single frame, images never configured together otherwise; cars driving across the ocean, igloos in the desert. Like in the movie; Dorothy lying tranquilized in a field of poppies, bicycling Miss Gulch circling her head. Like your family vacation photo. You somehow made your little brother Stephen stand on top of the Jefferson Memorial. Like you, now, living with one man and in love with another.
     In your office, lively and crowded, over your desk, a wall of bulletin board. Pictures of your personal life, one beside the other. Your Siamese cat stares out at you from the arm of a second-hand beige chair, your boyfriend in a borrowed tuxedo, that pout around his mouth. His eyes bore into you, chin resting on his left shoulder. Behind him the gray of your apartment. And as you ponder these open windows, you feel the presence of the man sitting across from you. The man with whom you share this office. The one who made you laugh ten minutes ago. The one who drew your picture in seven colors last week.
     Once you took a portrait of two friends, double exposed, one on top of the other. Very artsy, your sister told you. But which one did you want the picture to be about? It doesn't matter, you said. I don't care. Oh, but it does, she laughed back. Oh, but you do.

Kim Bromley is a drone in the movie biz, sometime writer, wanna be actress, and possible dog psychic. She writes dubious essays, short fiction, and poetry. She was recently floored to find out she'd been published in "BARk" magazine's reader's page. With the support and encouragement of "TinyLights," she marches on.