Lost, in red
Words that land on a face, and are read differently there.
- Where
- A square, Marseille
- When
- What lit it
- A projection meant for the wall behind
- Reading
- 1 minute
On a wall the word is a sign. On a face it becomes a mood, and people who pass stop to decide whose.
The projection was part of a festival of light that had officially ended an hour before. Someone had forgotten to switch off the last projector, and it went on throwing a poem, one red word at a time, onto the front of the old post office.
He stepped into it by chance, on his way across the square, and the photographer asked him to stay.
I would rather not know which word it was.
He stood there for the length of the poem, which was longer than either of them expected. The words came and went over his eyes and mouth, too big to read and too close to ignore.
Two people at the café on the corner started guessing what he was thinking. They agreed it was something sad, and then that it was something he had not said yet.
He never read what was written on him.
Photo: Pexels
