summer cannibals

True summer has begun. Trees are billowing large and green, the afternoons are growing almost too hot to bear, and time feels as though it's being stretched and consumed like taffy. These photos are from around this time in 2020; when I first picked up the roll, I realized someone had forgotten to provide the digital copies along with the physical ones (we were in a pandemic... who can blame them.) I use the digital copies for my editing, so I was disappointed to think that I would not be able do my usual dance or have the ability to post them. The thought of going back to request digital copies crossed my mind but pandemic brain prevailed. So, they sat on my shelf until a few weeks ago when Katie told me she had access to a scanner at work. I immediately thought of these photos, asked her to scan them, and had them within a day. Between the scanning and reformatting, the quality of the pictures look nothing like the originals. But quality is a funny word. The "quality" of an image is not the same as the "quality" of what's behind it, or what it's made from. I love the way these photos turned out. Looking at them feels like looking back in time, and not just through the year that has passed since taking them, but through a dreamy lens of summer heat. Like I can take a bite out of these memories and they will taste juicy like a peach or fuzzy like rock candy. So often in our lives, things both vast and small do not end up playing out the way we thought they would. Sometimes the playout is heartbreaking, but other times it is sweet in a way that can only exist with time.