Untitled Film Still
Cindy Sherman, 1979
A woman. A road. A suitcase. Synapses glitter, searching for the rest. Her body shoulders a hymn called nowhere: hair a ruff of pale rockwool, face vanished over bromine hills. Four blunt pines light blackened candles. The lake is an eye that returns your gaze. Her backward arms are now the roots that clutch out of the stony waste. She is the hour at the border. She is the scar of chance, a cursed surface spilling the pure hesitation of a verb. The future is a landscape that whispers carry only what you need. Toothbrush. Dresses. Cigarettes. Something to forget and something to burn. As the wind stoops silver in the valley, and the asphalt brushes her feet across the night, she builds a happiness from what lies close, even if all that remain are distance and the sky.