Cut All Ties: A Narrative Character Portrait by Alexander Kim (2014)

In this photo, I depict my character Annika from my narrative flash fiction. She is a 19 year-old girl who has run away from home several years ago, and began living her own life wandering the streets and trying to find a place of refuge and acceptance. Annika is in need of a loving relationship to the only person who ever mattered in her life; her mother. However, this is something she has been running from because she is afraid to face these unsettled feelings of sadness and distance between her and her mother. As a homeless teenager, Annika is self-sufficient but is also unable to care for herself enough to provide a place to live or something to be genuinely happy about.

In this moment, Annika is captured in a feeling of being homesick, trying to find comfort on the floor of a place that has no feelings of home to her. She is very upset, and knows deep down why she is sad, and knows what she could do to fix everything, but her fear and confused emotions prevent her from actively attempting to resolve the conflict she ran away from.