to look at a photograph
of a place
you once knew,
to know you walked there.

You try to recall what it must have looked like,
back then,
try to imagine the caress of the wind, or
what you know it must have smelled like, or
how the ground shifted
beneath your feet.

But you can't.

Memory is funny that way.
We remember without remembering.
These photographs are nothing but
broken portals to the past
leaving only chasms of static
where life should have been.