The Touch That Remains

A breeze moved through the canopy—soft, unhurried. The stone still held warmth, though the sun had already gone.

I stood before a bare wall in the courtyard of Angkor Wat’s second floor—unfinished, flat, waiting. From that silence, two figures had risen. Devatas nearly identical, their shoulders tilted slightly toward one another. Each held a lotus blossom. One reached across to rest her hand upon the other’s shoulder—a gesture so precise, so intimate, I could not tell if it had just occurred or had never ceased.

Their gaze was not outward, but inward. They did not watch. They remembered.

The exposure was long, but not longer than the silence. In the studio, I shaped the print slowly—my own ritual of return. Hand-toning it in gold was not an embellishment, but an act of listening. A way of giving light back to those who had given it away.

They were not made to glow.
They were made to keep.

they were not carved—
they arrived
in the silence the wall had kept

they did not shine
but remembered the sun
that loved them

one touch held both
offering and return
in the same breath

and what they gave
is still
being given