Danger At Rest — A Self-Portrait with the Poison Bottle

The night.. it settles in slow, finds the low places, pools in a cupped hand like it belongs there.

There's a bottle. Old glass, the kind that's held a hundred years of somebody's caution…the word still pressed into the glass itself: POISON. Do not drink, do not touch, do not. It doesn't glow because it's magic. It glows because something inside it remembers being dangerous, and refuses to fully let that go.

This isn't a photograph about fear. It's about what happens after fear gets old — when the thing that used to terrify you becomes something you keep close instead, because at least it's honest. At least it doesn't pretend to be safe.

I brought something dangerous to keep me company.

— Paulette

A note on the making: This piece continues my ongoing work in bioluminescent light treatments building the glow slowly, in thin layers, so the bottle stays the one living, saturated thing in an otherwise quiet frame. The bottle itself is a found antique, part of the growing prop library I use across this body of work.