there are images that induce
an inexplicable revulsion
not immediate,
but insidious,
a faint coagulation in the throat,
saliva gathering beneath the tongue,
the stomach performing
its quiet, involuntary revolt.
nothing in the photograph moves.
still, something curdles.
perhaps it is the distortion
of a face rendered permanent,
the grotesque intimacy
of being preserved mid-expression;
mouth, eyes, skin,
all made evidentiary.
somewhere beyond the frame,
laughter lingers like an afterimage.
and suddenly the body remembers
before the mind can name what happened:
the hollowing beneath the ribs,
the sudden pallor,
that nauseating ascent
from gut to sternum to throat;
as though disgust
were not an emotion at all,
but a kind of reflexive liturgy,
something rehearsed so often
the body has learned the prayer.
the photograph itself remains innocuous.
merely light arrested on paper,
a collection of pixels,
an ordinary human face.
yet the mouth floods
with the premonition of sickness,
and the image becomes
something almost sepulchral—
a small, immaculate record
of a moment
that should have been forgotten.