LOOSE TOOTH// LOST YOUTH

it’s ten p.m. do you know where your child is? probably out finding brand new ways to hate himself. it’s eleven p.m. do you know what happens in the red light? he undresses slowly, and he waits for the click of the shutter. the metallic scream of the lens closing in on itself, and the white hot heat of overexposure. twelve a.m. and he’s spitting tears and crying saliva in front of a wall as white and as blank as his filthy mind in some studio he never bothered to mention the address of. “where does the time go?” you wonder quietly to yourself and its one a.m. now and his skin lies in a figurative pile adjacent to a more literal one providing a temporary shelter for his designer clothes. polaroid film scattered on the floor, developing slowly, shedding light on images of an empty guilt slithering between newly exposed bones and tendons. and now it’s two a.m. and he’s putting his clothes back on again, shedding in reverse, leaving his skin in its metaphorical pile beside his bare feet. he takes his money and leaves the studio without saying goodbye to the crew. and you sit at home and you knit and you do crossword puzzles. its three a.m. do you know where your child is? probably wandering the streets downtown now that the buses have stopped running their meanderingly finite course. he breathes shallow in the quiet cold, and he breaks the rules. gets in cars with strangers. strangers with candy. strangers with money. strangers with temporary answers to infinite questions. its four a.m. do you know where your child is?

[photos: Kris Kidd ©Wes Klain 2011]