Penultimate
Part of Double Layers, a story told in sky and skin, code and memory.
Keyword: Gratitude
Media:
5x5 archival pigment print on 7x7 Hahnemühle German Etching paper with hand-trimmed edges;
Dye-sublimation print on ChromaLuxe Matte Maple panel (7x7 on 8x10)
Two hands offer roses—tender, luminous, and real. The image overlays a moon phase, quietly noting: First Quarter. Illumination: 52%. It marks the moment Anne crossed the threshold of halfway. Past the clarity she named before, but not yet at resolution.
The roses were a gift from her love, offered in celebration after her first show on Whidbey Island. A gesture of courtship, care, and encouragement. This image is a portrait—made with permission—of someone who once found it difficult to be seen. The act of granting that permission was, itself, a gift. Gratitude here is layered: for support, for love given, and for the unseen gift of a “permission slip” to release a bond that once defined them both.
Partially obscured text reads, “Get in loser, we’re healing and falling in love with life again.” Once sent playfully, now held like a mantra.
In Penultimate, gratitude is not a retrospective gloss—it’s a living record. A luminous accounting of what was real, what was generous, and what, through release, remains.
This piece changes history. In it, I give him my favorite flower—something I never actually did. At the time, I withheld it, unsure why, uncertain what it meant. It felt like a small betrayal of the heart.
Now, through this image, I offer it freely. The gesture is symbolic, but it’s also real. It is an act of return, of forgiveness—for him, for myself, and for all the complex souls who shaped our time together.
The making of this image came from deep within the process that has changed me. I have come to feel profound gratitude for my love—for the love he shared, the lessons he gave, the mirror he held up to my becoming. That gratitude carries longing too, but it no longer wounds.
This is not a definitive ending. Not quite a beginning, either. It is the moment just before—a breath held between what was and what might be.
This is the penultimate page: where healing becomes gesture, and gesture becomes love.