Whisper Studies, by Janelle Lynch

Whisper Study I, by Janelle Lynch (USA) 2019

Whisper Study I

I drop to my knees next to Nana on command. Fold my hands. Close my eyes. Bow my brown head, small among strangers. We pray for something I can’t understand, for something I should believe in, but don’t. We follow orders from a man in a white dress this week, black next, to sit, stand, sing, sign. We nod to each other, smile. Some shake hands, share wishes by rote for peace we don’t know. Nana, raising me, her daughter's child, in late middle age, may never know. Next to me is my god, not the figure on the cross above the altar, not the man in pictures. Next to me is my saviour. 

I drop to my knees with the news I saw walking up the pier that stood in the Hudson River. News imparted in his bowed head I last touched across the table five months before. News spread across the front page of his rounded shoulders speckled under his shirt with constellations of beauty marks he mistook for freckles until I taught him otherwise. (I taught him.) News broadcast in his awkward gait, both hurried and hesitant to reach me. 

I drop to my knees on the bare beach in front of the Atlantic. Sand softens my landing. The drama of my gesture is mirrored in that of late autumn’s waters, in the sky’s Payne’s Grey palette, in the dunes' shapes, wind-sculpted. No one is around to bear witness save for the sea’s gulls, shells, weed, so I stand up to fall again, to be caught. To be cradled.

Whisper Study II, by Janelle Lynch (USA) 2019

​Whisper Study II

I am stopped in shadow on the stairs. Underneath the feet of my pajamas is carpet the colour it’s not supposed to be. It shows the singe marks of embers fallen from the cigarettes that made may grandfather disappear forever to a place I had only heard of, had never seen. My presence there is a secret. Through the baluster bars, I watch my grandmother across the room. Everything is brown—her hair, her skirt, her stockings, her open-toed shoes. Her hands hold her belly. She stands only inches away from a black and white photograph of my grandfather framed on the wall. I have never seen her so close to anything. I have never seen her whisper. 

I am stopped on the threshold of the sculpture studio, covered in clay. The saw’s sounds draw me near. The pink double doors open slightly to a courtyard, to a Greenwich Village mews. Former carriage houses line both sides and protecting those huddled in the corner and the school where I study is a mulberry tree losing her limbs. Aproned, arms akimbo, I shout. Hands in prayer, I whisper.

I am stopped under the new Southern sky motionless in front of the rental’s open hatch. I hear not the river’s beat, but my own heart’s. There is the March midnight chill. The scent of the mountain pines. The taste of the coffee that kept me awake on the twelve hour drive. The touch of my feet on the ground I cannot feel. There is not the woven basket. Not its contents. Not the pink floral tin canister, not the green. Not the remnants. Not you. My God, I whisper.

Janelle Lynch

Janelle Lynch is a writer and an award-winning photographer. Her writing has been published in monographs and in journals including Afterimage, The Photo Review, and Loupe. Her photographs have been exhibited worldwide and are in several museum collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Victoria and Albert Museum; and the Denver Art Museum. She has three monographs published by Radius Books: Los Jardines de México (2010); Barcelona (2012), which also includes her writings; and Another Way of Looking at Love (2018). She is a faculty member at the International Center of Photography and is represented by Flowers Gallery.