Stepping Out of the Photo

A Poem by Minnie

Steady yourself in the past, but do not anchor yourself there, if you do you may never leave. I write this as I look through old photographs of who I used to be. I do not even look like the same person, I guess that was my point. I wanted to run as far away as I could from who I was, but in the end you miss your old self. The person you were before all the “befores” and “after’s”. You miss the way you smiled, but wish you could tell the old you what was coming, what type of hell was waiting for you. But knowing the old you would not want to know what is coming, even though you hate surprises. You want to scream at the picture and tell the old you to run, and never stop. You realize nothing can change the past, so all those years of trauma that you have shoved so far back in your mind are now coming to the surface.

You look close at the pictures of you, you focus on the small changes, your hair cut, your style, your make up or lack thereof. Then you see the big changes, you see you do not smile the same, you are not so tense, you look happy. You looked so young and full of life, before life hit, before someone stole the light out of your eyes. So you begin to cry, you feel so overwhelmed and just wish you could go back to those moments in the pictures. The photo of me and my older sibling dressed for Halloween, smiling with a bag full of candy, my high school graduation, my mother holding me as a baby, my father sitting in the background before he completely left the pictures to come.

Those moments you thought no one caught on camera, you throwing tantrum as a child, crying because you did not get your way. Being embarrassed, being silly, being happy, being sad, being a clown. You catch a photo that makes your knee jerk, it is you, isn’t it scary, being able to see you before all the time caught up to you. You hit play on the memory in the photograph and you can smell the fresh clothes hanging on the line. You feel the soft towels hitting your face as you run under the clothes line. But in the memory you are the only one. No one is around, just you in the sun, wind blowing, and the fresh cut grass being so green. The grass has never looked that green since, as it the color no longer exists.

More life in the past than you see in the future. You now see that your smile does not curve the same, your eyes do not glow the same. You family, most gone now are not in the picture. Try to make sense of where everyone went. It is as if I stepped out of a colorful photo to enter the black and white world. How do you bring the colors back, how do you smile the same again, finding the shine in their eyes seems impossible.