Closed Book

Two-dimensional beings

Hanging on dripping sheets

From a length of string

Across my safelight room

.

The glow of red means stop, but

The alchemy continues

Shadowy wraiths come to life, from the gossamer dead

To better living through chemistry

.

There they are, invited and rendered

Real people in frozen reiterations

Put in planar constraints for the tertiary beings

Who bring them out

All of them hang there, lifeless

All dead from the last generation

Dripping with solvents, emulsion sublimating silver iodide

Where zombies claw themselves out to join the living

.

They survive until they burn out in the light

Then they fade away, back

Into the word-of-mouth tales

Told at weddings and funerals and bar mitzvahs

.

A whole generation who could otherwise

Fit in an 8x10-inch album of faux leather and acetate sleeves

On the shelf making way for the next generation

Of homuncular redux into one dimension

.

One of pixels and data

That merely summarize

Those who lived life full

From beginning to end