Captured

Photo walk. We walked around every undiscovered corner of our little neighborhood until the fading Hebrew awnings blended into one another and the graffiti on the walls collapsed into a heap of paint at our feet, and we imprisoned every moment into our phones, refusing to let them out of our retinas. In number 18, a woman boards a bicycle, donning her printed windbreaker with a sigh. In number 24, a man and his son fall off their skateboards, breaking their fall with one arm and clutching their yarmolkes with the other. In number 27, my own father pierces the lens, surrounded by a spectrum of spray paint over a dirty garage door a few blocks over. These are the pieces of our world.

And he, my own father, agreed to trek across the railroad tracks and through the superstore in search of the fragmented reality I haven't found in my bed watching Netflix. He agreed to sift through my inspiration, even in the face of insanity and, let's admit it, 10% colorblindness to his 4. He even managed to keep our dialogue blank and bubbly, like the expensive champagne brands that make everyone seem to laugh. We only argued once, about the appropriate distance to scurry into a six-lane avenue in search of a late bus. And twice, about the photograph emblazoned with a single word printed onto a sheet of old card stock: WOW! (That was the one I liked, and he found too ordinary. Strange. Usually I'm the one who can't see I've already squeezed enough magic out of my wizardly father to paint my name across the side of a building, in memorial of a mystical day.)