Elyse Ricketts

the things i kept,

A detail of a larger diptych, this cropped image of a dried bouquet holds the flowers in a state that is both preserved and already past. The petals curl inward, maintaining the shape of something once open—an indication of the passage of time.I think about what it means to be made of what I have kept—of people, of exchanges, of things once given and never fully let go of; they become traces that continue to shape me. The flowers hold this condition: something altered, but not gone. A tenderness that persists in material form, where what once was alive remains, not as it was, but as something I continue to carry.