She is a picture on the wall. Black and white in a row of color prints. This is how you use a strobe.
If you are a photographer, you call it a strobe. For everyone else, it is just a flash. If you want to know how a photograph was lit, just look at the reflections in the subject’s eyes. You can see the single strike of the strobe in her left eye.
She was at a carnival that night. You can see the blur of the lights in the background above her head. It was early spring. Her right hand is too close to the camera and out of focus. This brings an illusion of depth to the two-dimensional surface.
But this illusion does not accurately reflect her personal depth. She is the strength of steel balanced on the petal of a flower. She has the face of a girl and the wisdom of an old woman.
She is a never-ending dichotomy.
Her porcelain skin does not reflect the challenges she has faced, for nothing is ever as perfect as it seems. She is not the same person she was yesterday, she and she will not be the same person tomorrow.
She is ever-changing, in a state of constant growth and self-education.
She has seen things and been places which others can only dream of. Yet she has an unwavering sense of home and family. They allow her to go and at the same time want to keep her close.
Still, she is following her bliss wherever it leads her.
She takes her car out on the open road and drives. There is no plan of where she is going, only that she wants to go. She stops at the places that catch her eye, and she jokes about pillaging along the way.
She is dreaming of a time when she can keep on going for days without need for turning back.