Conclusion: Afterimage

James Torgerson / VMag at UVA

After the last light goes out, something still lingers.

Not the thing itself, but its negative: a shape burned into the

back of the eyes. This is what remains of a self

after it has been looked at too long.

A blue weight, a shimmer, a shape keeps arriving

After it has already gone.

I used to believe a self-portrait meant standing

Still long enough to be known.

As if the body were a surface

That could be fixed. But every

Time the light struck, something slipped.

A double formed.

A third thing blinked into being and

Refused to resolve.

What looks back at me now is not an identity

But an afterimage—

A ghost the gaze left behind.

Desire bends it.

Memory stains it.

Time drags it out of phase with itself.

Each version of me believes it is the original,

But all of them are only echoes of a moment

When someone looked too closely.

Perhaps this is all a self ever is:

A figure made by pressure,

A body shaped by the heat of attention,

A trembling between being seen

And being gone.

Even love, that bright instrument,

Does not reveal us— it overexposes.

It turns the heart into a negative,

Burning out the centre until only its halo remains.

So, this poem ends the way it began:

Not with a face,

But with a field of light where something

Once stood.

The image has vanished.

The impression has not.

Somewhere, the body is still glowing

In the dark.