Scrolling through timelines 

I realise how we mentally compartmentalize

Events in our head. Look at these pictures… 

That was the last dinner we went for together

Here is the wedding the year after Ma died. 

See those are of the first vacation without her,

This was the last holiday with Baba. It’s funny

How the person in the pictures disappear

Only to reappear in memories

Of pictures dragged out of old albums 

And shared again and again

Somehow bringing to life a void

That never is not emptied, of an abyss 

Holding an image of happier times, 

Of a deepening darkness as we look inside 

And cannot find the people we seek. 

I feel the weight of that nothingness 

Of that clinging fragrance, that voice I heard

Only a while ago. Was it really that long? 

If only pictures could speak and memories be erased 

As quietly as the people who touch our lives are gone

Banished from our photographs. Forever.