Photographs are happy <br />Lies; they bring back false memories <br />And smiles that never were. <br /> <br />They recall dusty skins of ourselves – <br />We thought we’d shed them long ago <br />But here is the laughing evidence. <br /> <br />At the time we argued, frowned, but when something is to be <br />Recorded in the annals of our lives <br />We ‘grit our teeth’ and smile. <br /> <br />Later glazed memories and reluctant minds <br />Allow false recollection, aided <br />By these mendacious schemers. <br /> <br />You rifle through the dusty sheaves <br />One person in dungarees, you are sure you once loved, jumps out – <br />Their voice, their personality eludes you, but their counterfeit grin endures. <br /> <br />For an instant you stop and think – is there something fickle <br />About photography? Need it be so fallacious? <br />Should we make an effort to capture the moment, rather than what we want to remember? <br /> <br />Nowadays, it is yet more abandoned: you can condemn whatever <br />Photographs do not flatter, whatever <br />Photographs tell the truth. <br /> <br />But interrupted by a clumsy child with a greedy camera – <br />Clamouring, grasping, he steals a part of you with every flash <br />Wait, you exclaim without thinking, let me fix my hair. <br /> <br />Calmly, without a shimmer of irony, you begin the ritual again <br />And again and again; do you not realise <br />That this is how you will be remembered?<br /><br />Maddi Eden<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/legacies/
