This is a photograph of an aeroplane window. This time, it is taken from the outside. The window is glazed with the reflection of clouds and a clear blue sky. Looking through it, a small, pale face, framed by fair hair. A girl. She is staring straight into the lens. Her blue eyes watery, piercing. Sad.
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You put the photograph down and feel as though you have woken from a dream. You don't know how much time has passed since you opened up the box, but outside, the light is growing dim. You look at the last photo and realise, suddenly, that it was impossible. Such a photo should not exist. Who could have taken it? The plane was in the air; no one could possibly have taken it. You flip through them again, scrutinising every image, finding plenty more in which the identity, or existence, of the photographer is uncertain, problematic. Many, of course, could have been taken using a timer setting. But not all of them. And certainly not the last photograph. You notice that the improbable photographer seems to have been attached to the girl, present during her outward journey, lingering after the boy had left. As though the photographs, though not taken by her, were personal to her, were representative of her memories, her psyche. And though they aren't all taken from her perspective, you wonder if, perhaps, these are her indeed her memories, her version of events. Indonesia 2012, as told by the girl. Somehow consecrated as physical images. An unsatisfactory conclusion, logically speaking. But you feel that somehow it is the only solution that makes sense. You clear the photographs away and place them back in order in the box you found them in. With the utmost care. As though you were reaching into the girl's mind itself, to put back the memories where you found them.
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