Thursday 14 June 2012

Volume 11: The Photograph




That photograph looks better

Lying on the floor,

Dangerously close to the fireplace,

Trapped inside its chipped wooden frame,

Topped with a sprinkling of glass.

There, it is a better representation of

Who we are.

Everything about that photograph is wrong.

Who are those smiling people?

They are certainly not like that now.

They are strangers to me,

And strangers to each other.

And that unblemished white background?

It shouldn't be white at all.

It should be stained with midnight tears,

Cut up with sharp words,

And clouded by the silence that hangs in the air,

The aftermath of a huge mistake.

I would much rather have taken a pair of scissors,

And cut those people apart from each other,

And scattered them in the blizzard

That whips hungrily outside my window as I speak.

I would rather sacrifice the photographic shreds

To the claws of that ravenous beast

So that it may snatch them up

And take them far away from this place.

But I can't.

So I just let the frame fall from my hands

Onto the fake laminate

And hope that, by shattering the glass,

I can give those people a chance

To breathe

Instead of suffocating beneath

Their smiling masks.


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