Fundamentals/Photo

If you could find a photo of you at your happiest, what does that picture look like?

I took a photo of myself recently.

Just with my old smartphone, wasn't some

artsy shot worth a million bucks or something. 

Ya know. All I'm saying, you're not gonna see it

hanging in the Louvre, yeah? 
(I feel like we're digressing. But
you get the gist.) 

I don't hate this photo. 
It's obvious that I've had a gin or two - 
people just grin differently after a gin, 
don't they? Somehow it's a goofy grin, 

a spontaneous sort of grin.

Poached a pair of glasses from my ma' 

... cheap, outdated things

from The Jessica Fletcher fashion range. 
Ma watches a lot of Murder She Wrote. 

And a tussle of my dark brown hair
- biological inheritance that, Mediterranean

features - is poking out from that baseball 

cap I always wear. Dangling down my

forehead and limp like the tail of

a dozing dog, dreaming about steak 

and b*****s*.  

My ex saw the picture. She said that

I looked a bit like David Foster Wallace

- that's pretty neat. I've always fancied

myself a bit of a writer. 

Anyhow, to the punchline. I know 
I'm misappropriating the word a little,
but you won't mind. We're friends now

you and I... bonded over the course  

of this one poem, not that you noticed

that until I mentioned it now. 
The punchline: 
Looking at this picture, taken on a 

night when I was surrounded by

my family, playing cards, I realise 
that I love being with them. 
I hate being alone. 
People always tell you to go out into

the Big Bad World, and make something

of yourself. Sure. Whatever that means. 
But I'm pleading with ya, just one friend

to another. Don't give up on your family. 
Your home.The fundamentals. 
Cause you can't buy them things. 
And everyone dies. 

*B***h is a word for a female dog, so I get to use that word here without being all derogatory, and what not