Hard Beat

“Just…,” she says, and then stops as she rolls her shoulders, a war waging across her features over the confession I can see trembling on her lips. But the simple word and the tone in which she says it does its job, because I don’t move. “All I’m doing is taking pictures.” She holds her camera up in front of her as if its mere presence is proof. And of course the notion lingers that we’ve been here with the camera between us before and when I called her bluff, I was in the wrong. “When I feel restless, I go out and take pictures… I get lost in seeing the world through a filter, can distance myself… and sometimes it’s not until the sun comes up that I realize I’ve been up all night long. I don’t know how else to explain it, other than it calms me.”