The Laughter That Endures
The stone still held warmth, but the sun had gone.
I approached slowly. The path curved into shadow, then opened into a wall of radiant quiet. There they were—two devatas carved into the courtyard’s inner wall, poised not in warning, not in greeting, but in something softer. Something that felt like companionship.
One tilted her head slightly. The other seemed to hold her breath. A curl of lotus wound across each shoulder. Their hips turned, mirrored but not identical. And their smiles—those were not temple smiles. They were the kind shared in secret, in memory, in light.
They were not waiting for me. But I knew I had arrived.
I placed the camera as gently as I could, not because they might vanish—but because they never had.
a slant of gold
in the hollow of their earrings—
the day folding in on itself.
they are not guarding,
not dancing,
not even witnessing.
they are simply
there,
where light meets stone
and stays
just long enough
to be remembered.
Also in Library
Stone That Remembers the Sky
This poem listens to Angkor not as ruin, but as grammar—where moss, shadow, and proportion carry devotion forward without spectacle. What endures here is not glory, but measure: a way of standing that no longer needs witnesses.
Rice-Ghost and the Seven Drums
At harvest, the danger is not hunger but forgetting how to listen.
This folklore retelling speaks of drums struck for silence, of grain taken without gratitude, and of a narrow figure who does not punish—only waits. A tale of pacts made not with spirits, but with attention itself.
Naga Vow
A lost city sleeps in the jungle, its thresholds carved with serpents — not ornament, but law. This vow-poem enters love as sacred hunger: desire as guardianship, devotion as possession, the body speaking without language. A liturgy of heat, roots, rain, and the terrible tenderness of being claimed.
$250
Angkor Wat Temple, Angkor, Cambodia — 2020
Limited Edition Archival Pigment Print
Edition
Strictly limited to 25 prints + 2 Artist’s Proofs
Medium
Hand-toned black-and-white archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Bamboo — a museum-grade fine art paper chosen for its quiet tactility and reverent depth, echoing the spirit of the temples.
Signature & Numbering
Each print is individually signed and numbered by the artist on the border (recto)
Certificate of Authenticity
Accompanies every print
Image Size
9.5 x 6.8 inches (24.1 x 17.3 cm)
There are devatas who guard, and devatas who guide—but these two, carved in gold-shadowed stone at the courtyard of Angkor Wat’s second floor, do something rarer still: they smile. And what passes between them is not silence, but sisterhood.
The sandstone wall from which they emerge was left unfinished, and perhaps because of this, their presence feels even more alive—two figures poised mid-laughter, lotus blossoms resting across their shoulders like garlands passed between gods. They are nearly identical, yet subtly distinct, and in that tension blooms a sacred mischief.
Captured by Lucas Varro on large-format black-and-white film in the golden hush of evening, the image was shaped with classical chiaroscuro and later hand-toned in gold. This final gesture—the gold—was not for show, but for remembrance: a way to honour what the light had once touched, and what it now leaves behind.
Printed on museum-grade Hahnemühle Bamboo paper, each impression is hand-toned, signed, and presented in a strictly Limited Edition of 25 + 2 Artist’s Proofs. These are not multiples, but meditations.
To live with this image is to welcome the hush of joy into your home.
Click here to follow their whispered laughter into the Artist’s Journal.
