There are profound simple truths. Every person has a path, continuously weaving itself towards experience, often fragmented by something undesirable to create a desired line. The person who took these images was younger, more romantic, and more impressionable than the person writing now. The beginning of the series takes place in Memphis–my hometown of nineteen years–at the start of the pandemic. I was in the process of recovering from my darkest depression. Somehow, looking inward seemed like a way forward, documenting the small beauty within a life I seldom found reassuring. Relocating to Ocracoke–a small island belonging to the outer banks of North Carolina–the following August was unplanned. I fell in love, not only with a boy but with the community, the land, and the wayward living of island life. It was an escape from the enclosure of Memphis, yet through documenting this new chapter, I found myself in conversation with the other self, the one who’d been struggling against constraints of my own making. Desire Lines can be read in multiple ways–as a narrative, prophecy, reckoning, poem, or allegory. Either way, it signifies those most precious moments of reflection.