I want to be captured just as I am right now
My worries and trials show in my face where before there was only the sweet depth of young hope
The path I have to walk, with its forks marked Mother and Therapist and Citizen of the World loom before me, their pebbly grounds flat
If you look carefully, you see their convergence in the two furrows above my eyebrows
Where is the sepia portrait of me? Everyone has one
That is how I know my mother’s unfamiliarity with married life
It was written in the way she stood next to my father in their honeymoon photo, a bride not yet used to her own body
That is how I know my great-uncle enjoyed bedding his shrill wife
The lines of their bodies compliant in the picnic photo.
Whoever took those photos knew what they were capturing; the intent was there to solidify that moment, in bitterness, in wondernment, as evidence
It was proof they knew the subjects, the characters whose stories bubbled beneath veneers.
Who’s going to take my picture?