works by w.pham

works by william pham, 2005-present

Woodblock Print Girl

It was winter. She had been wearing white, opaque tights, black knee-high boots, a gray wool skirt that fell to just above the tops of her smooth knees, a white cashmere turtleneck sweater, and a plain silver chain with no pendant. That was the order in which she dressed herself. She sat on the edge of the bed, pulling the tights on, one leg at a time, then over her hips. She hadn't worn any underwear; I never asked her why.

I helped her clasp the chain at the nape of her neck and inhaled while I did so: barely ripe peaches on the fine china. Sticks of burning incense. All surrounded by pictures of people I had never met, whose spirits were supposed to be watching over me. I was suddenly glad I had not thought of that image the previous night because, really, who wants to think of spirits watching over their shoulder during sex?

And then she was gone, and I was sitting on the edge of the bed, next to where she would have been if she had stayed. I stood, and hesitated, as if on the edge of a precipice, looking down into an infinite abyss, replete with pebbles tumbling over in warning of the looming dangers. No parachute, no ropes, no safety harness -- just the abyss, and me.

I did the only logical thing I could have done in that situation. It was either the abyss or her, and I chose her.

I pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and ran out the door, down the hallway, barefoot. I opened my mouth to shout out her name but I realized that I didn't know her name. Only her face, her hair, her ears, her eyes, her forehead, her neck, her chin, her lips, her nose, her shoulders, the curvature of her spine. But not her name, because weighed against everything else that night, it hadn't occurred to me to ask. What value was there in a name when I was surrounded by her? Everything that amounted to her. Everything of her identity that I needed to know, I found it in the details -- how her thin wrists fit inside my hands. How her hipbone felt underneath my fingertips. The definition of her calves was a woodblock print carved into my memories; the attributes that defined her were a series of woodblock prints. Number Four: "The Definition of Her Calves." Number Seven: "The Arc of Her Shoulder Blades." Number Nineteen: "The Bottom of Her Ribcage."

And so on.

I was out on the street, still barefoot, still searching, mouth slightly open as if I were setting out the red carpet in case Her Illustrious Eminency, The Name, decided to pay a congenial visit to my thoughts. But no name was forthcoming, and I knew it, but I denied it. There was no phone number, no e-mail address. No breadcrumbs in the forest, no yellow brick road, no looking glass to tumble through.

She was well and truly lost to me.

I probably looked like a mess.

"Do you, um, need some change?" someone asked.

I definitely looked like a mess.

Cars drove by in streams of blurred pastels, oblivious of my immense loss. The person who had offered change became offended when I did not respond, and moved on.

I knew then that I would spend the rest of my life looking for her, whether I liked it or not, because I had made a choice, and in that span of however many seconds it was, I gave her something that was worth more than a name.

Everywhere I go -- Paris, New York, Tokyo, London, Sydney, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Moscow -- I print out flyers that read:

		Wanted: The incomparable milk of wonder
		Lost on: A winter day
		Contact: 1 ( XXX ) XXX - XXXX (USA)

I mostly just get prank calls, but I don't mind.