The woman tells the story of her father teaching her to swim, his hands supporting her in the water, the important lesson of learning to float because floating will save you if you are imperiled. I try to imagine a father's hands on my waist, a weightlessness, and I do, I can, but it is not imagining it is memory. Of my father lifting me up, up but we are not in water, we are on the roof of our high rise building, and now he is holding me over the edge too far too far and I do not know what madness, what lesson he is trying to impart with my life balancing on his hands, on this parapet.

This memory sours my day. Someone has vomited on the sidewalk, and covered their shame with a newspaper. Beyond the rectangle of paper is the splatter of forceful sickness and a light rain has fixed the whole mess fast.

The women line up for a photograph I see suddenly, in their careful dress and styling, everything they are trying to hide: a thick waist, short legs, oddly set breasts, an overall lack of grace. They angle their faces towards the camera, expectant, and I would like to see a natural heliotrophism but I realize that here too is the result of hours of examination and camoflauge, the heads held just so, the approach to the lens so exact as to hide puffy undereyes, a jawline gone blurry with fat, a weak chin, an unlovliness.

Walking to the subway after work I take photograph after photograph, trying to frame what I see, trying to find balance in the rust and thievery, the hustle and garbage, the slums and disdain.