FILIZ FISH

Ode to the iPhone Photo Gallery

i chase the girl i was, estranged shadows slipping 
through the fractures of a three-by-six grid. 

i trace her geography––emigrated land––
spilling salt and regret over mirrored flesh.

she finds solace in the static of selfies, 
recording herself as erasure, sliding

into the liminal space between lens and skin;
pores turned pixel, features made myth.

i know she cursed herself because i crowned
from that ache—disease brewing in the darkroom

where i played god with my hands, pinching
and pulling my image into synthetic silhouette.

i can’t stop her corruption, speak to her—tell her
the teenage dream makes currency of tears,

of bikini bodies and bleached-blonde hair.
how do you convince daddy’s little girl 

her title expires, not to waste her years chasing 
birthday candles? my camera roll is a phantasm

of self, a fractal of me shattered into images of 
her that morph into a singular life. i’m lost 

in a carousel of pictures, ghosts of the innocence
i scorned, relics of youth’s tenancy. i lay the mortar

of memory with high definition, wondering if
i will hang this moment, too, in the gallery of my past   

Filiz Fish is a high school junior from Los Angeles, California. An alumna of the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop, her work has been recognized by the National Poetry Quarterly, The New York Times, the Adroit Journal, and more. She currently serves as an editor for her school’s literary magazine, The Polygraph.