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The Backpack Generation: Part Four
"Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid."
The polaroid stood silently, paper clipped to a fresh page on her open notebook. In its eye, the moment in time that it held prisoner followed her every movement, mockingly indifferent to her every breath, each flutter of her eyelids. It was a memory made tangible of an encounter with a man, a ghost, who was never there in the first place. It was a portrait of the impossible.
The tip of her index finger skated softly over the film's glossy surface, behind it a sea of blue lines and college ruled margins. She felt him there in that room and imagined vividly the heat from his breath and the sound of his ruffling collar. He was there with her. She was sure of it.
The polaroid didn't blink when it assured her he wasn't.
"If you could only see how much I want to hold you right now."
She recited the words, his words, his tremor.
Rafferty.
The polaroid whispered to tell her that he wasn't there.
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