The Album

Brother leans into the sun in his oversized plastic glasses, holes left by recently shed baby teeth in his grin. Mother, still in the dress of the 70's hippie scene, with her arm wrapped protectively around her pregnant belly, smiling proud. Sister on the beach, striking a ballet pose in a multi-coloured coat. She made it herself and slipped rolled up poems between the patches and fabric as she went.

One day he'll stop smiling like that. It won't be fun anymore, posing for a picture for mom. He'll stand stiff and force a small smile. He'll lean away.

That baby won't always feel as proud of it's life as you are.

There will be a time when she looks back at that coat and wishes she could reach in and rip it out of the photo, burn those silly poems, those
naive dreams she dedicated to earth and sky. She found urban far away from the beach, urban needs no elements.

Everyone has them. Laughing on a sunlit day, you can see the sunbeams captured between the trees. But it wasn't that simple. We didn't keep laughing for long after the flash. We all know it was never that simple. They sit on the walls, slipped into albums, lit up on the screen and tell such a lovely lie. Comforting with once upon a times, but never saying if it was happily ever after.

What a beautiful world, a alien might think looking at our collections of moments, they're always smiling.

I would like to dismiss them. I would like to pick up a photo of myself and see nobody I know and sometimes I do.

I snipped some into little pieces once to feel better. A photo of myself, with a girl I knew in elementary school. We were smiling. I wanted to do something, stop this event to-be, I wanted to yell at the girl who was smiling a little less surely to get out of that frame, go! This other
doesn't care about you, you will never be one of them, you will be hurt many times over and they will never know or care! So now it's gone.

But I look more closely lately at these old photos and I can see in the eyes of the past that maybe I've got it backwards. Maybe in some ways this is happily ever after, if not happily then it's at least ever after and that is something to the people staring back at me.

I want to reach backwards into the frame but perhaps she was reaching forwards. She wanted to know that she'd still be there someday and time
wouldn't fail her. She didn't know what was going to happen after that second at all, or even if there would be another... and another. I do. Now I just want to open up my memory and erase the backward and forwards and let it all just be. I'd like her to see me laugh, because she can too. I want her to hear me say that; you know what? I don't give a shit what that other girl thinks of me. She didn't seem to care because she didn't understand, she was no teen goddess, she was a person who just didn't get it and that's her loss, not mine. It hurt but now it doesn't matter, and that is the time unfrozen you're looking out at me for.

Brother's alright, it's alright. He's living life well. He laughs a lot, but never wears sunglasses.

This baby might not always be proud of itself, but baby is proud of life and baby knows you're proud for it, and baby will live off of that until it learns to be proud all on its own.

Sister doesn't dance anymore, sister dresses like anyone else, but sister dreams lovely dreams of life inside the urban and keeps them in the dustjackets of future novels instead of cloth.

I've opened the album again to add a new picture. I was a little nervous when it was taken, there were so many people around. If you look closely, you can see my face isn't quite holding a smile properly and beside me everyone's a little nervous, too, in that moment with all the preparation for the big day finally done even though they're having a good time and
smiling. It was all a little overwhelming with so many people there. That was the moment.

May I remember to remember.