A yellow baby t-shirt; mashed pumpkin stains
pressed into the cotton— a milky burp across
the collar, no longer white.
Chubby cheeks filled his face for the first
few years, till he swallowed them by eight.
Four years earlier, he was half the boy
he'd spend the rest of childhood becoming.
Two missing front teeth— a love for carrots;
biting crescents from the corner of his mouth.
Red, glassy eyes, still wet from tears— forced
to smile beneath the flash of a school camera.
No teeth. Just a crooked smirk; years later,
he can't help but grin with a full set of teeth.
Looking through these fading photographs,
their corners curled with age, I can't help but
smile at my growth— every picture holding
a smaller version of me, still developing, like
film left in the dark, waiting to become itself.