picture this

amy's chucks
caryn's brim
bobby's flex
linda's...lynn

it's not even that these things, themselves, are so important. it's that taking a picture of anything bestows importance upon it - documentation, yours.

(and of course it's the responsible thing to do. a receipt, upon your own life.)

pictures of checks, written and received. pictures of damage, caused and reported. pictures of people, seen and passed.

landscapes, roadsigns, timestamps; all mine.

a pinch-preserved scene of the past.

red's tail
mikey's sleep
sammy's yowl
scherzo's beep

i have to have them all, or nothing at all. there is no such thing as half empty, half full.

what has been gone? what has been given?

i have to know. accountable to myself, and god.

but it's embarrassing, too. not just needing the whole scrapbook, but wanting any snapshot at all.

i was there. you were there.
you were there with me. we were there.

(i love you, but you don't care. i love you. you were there.)

but old folks only want pictures of their grandkids.

nicky's bones
david's tie
taylor's car
kate's blue sky

to most folks, a picture is just that: data in image format. a dimensional equivalent to text.

(just as fleeting - a message in chat. but my boss can see it - how about that?)

not to me, though. even my obsession with perfect record in text pales in comparison to what i won't let slide in graphical form.

i will remember this night by the picture untook, perhaps. by the looks unstolen. by the sheer unimportance of it all.
there will be many such nights just like it.

many such nights. many such cases. many such worries, about unforgotten spaces.
space occupied, in my brain, for this horrible, hindering, dull refrain.

if we must repeat, year on year, then it must be forever. it must be here.