#photos
My family photo is not like others;
it’s full of adults chasing the young,
it’s full of inside jokes,
the unbreakable bond between us all.
It’s full of everyone yelling “smile”
as we try for the 100th time to take the snap.
My family photo has everyone in it:
the first people to ever meet me,
to ever love me.
It has the whole family tree,
the funny uncles and the weird aunts,
the grandparents who always sneak us treats,
even the dog.
Laughter, and nothing hidden between us.
Unfiltered happiness.
The kids being held by the generations before,
just like the hand-me-downs they wear.
The dress my great aunt once wore when she was my age,
the same smile passed down through time.
The whispers of where life has been,
and the maps of where it’s to go.
My family photo is not like others.
It does not exist.
Apr 13
Apr 13, 2026 at 5:20 PM UTC
I would rather pretend
That you've always hated me
Than to remember
How much you've truly loved me
So that I can
Finally stop looking at you
Nov 20, 2025
Nov 20, 2025 at 8:38 AM UTC
I remember the first time…
I purchased a camera,
It was a disposable one; bought to be taken and thrown away.
That flimsy cheapskate, I took on a Year Nine bus excursion to Adelaide -
Photos of friends, felines (seals, we went to the zoo) and feet (nail polish and toe rings were big back then!).
I remember getting these snapshots developed and sticking them up on my wall, for a moment I was cool (ahem… ;p )
My second camera was a small, second-hand “Sony” with a sling that I held on to like a clutch.
That one, I took black-and-white photos with; nostalgic, chronologuing my puberty years: first crushes, family events in the backyard, and of course “selfies” before they were a thing!
My third camera… a Canon SLR…
Oh, how I fell in love with her; sleek, strong and two lenses to capture the micro and macro views of history - the ultimate accessory!
I also wore her like a handbag; it's all I needed for a time —
This one captured my love of sunrises and sunsets - divine.
I haven't worn her lately…
The journey that I've had with my eyes has taken me by surprise,
And grief ~ yes I am now naming it ~ has made the lenses not seem as clear, crisp…captivating —
Is it time to take her out again and open the shutters once more?!
Nov 9, 2025
Nov 9, 2025 at 4:06 PM UTC
You know? Today I started crying out of nowhere.
Lying in bed, phone in hand, photo gallery open,
and a picture you once took of me, distracted,
where I swear to heaven, I look terrible.
The tears slid endlessly down my cheeks
and fell onto my bare chest,
knocking at the door of my heart,
asking to be let in to clean a little of the dirt
left by the footsteps of an old love—
if it can even be called love.
I tried to stop them, but they were insistent, relentless, burning, enveloping.
And the worst part is, that list of words isn’t meant to describe pain,
but to show you how much they… how much you make me feel.
The last time I wrote about love…
No, I’m sorry.
The last time I wrote about what I thought was love,
I did it with tears in my eyes—just like now—
but those tears were crushing, piercing, devouring.
They didn’t knock at the door to clean; they barged in, ready to drown.
I guess that makes it seem like I’ve never really known what love is.
But looking at that photo in my gallery, for a moment I thought
that for the first time, I could see.
I could feel, I could believe.
For the first time I was close to understanding love—
to drinking it, to savoring it, to living it.
Do you know why I cried?
I cried because I saw myself in you.
I saw myself through your eyes and I was beautiful.
I was funny, I was smart,
I was a glass of water to a man who had lived his whole life thirsty.
I was me, in all my splendor.
And I have never been splendid.
But for you, splendid is a word too small.
And I hate to tell myself this,
but I’m about to believe you.
I’m about to believe that I deserve to be loved the way you love me,
that I deserve to be listened, no matter what I speak of,
that I deserve to walk on flowers and fresh grass
and stop dragging my feet across a road of broken plates,
that I deserve more than the cold blade of despair.
That I deserve you.
But it scares me so much to believe.
It scares me to open my palm and receive without trembling,
to fear that one day you’ll wake up and decide I’m not enough,
to fear that this too will turn to dust in my hands
and I’ll walk on splinters again instead of petals.
It scares me that my heart won’t know how to hold
what it has always asked for.
And yet here I am, with open hands.
Willing to let you see me and name me without masks,
to let your eyes rebuild me with every glance,
to walk without fearing that my steps will be heard,
to stop being afraid of love,
and to believe, even trembling,
that this time, at last, love belongs to me.
Sep 28, 2025
Sep 28, 2025 at 8:09 PM UTC
Books and photos on paper
are a fine way of preserving
and keeping my life complete -
who I have become
from my youth up, memories
of my family, images
of their presence
their activities and the places
that belong to it, all together
a constantly growing mountain
with hair-thin dendrites:
the mountain of my life
Jul 20, 2025
Jul 20, 2025 at 3:18 AM UTC
CLICK
Then a great flash,
A moment preserved in paper,
Time trapped in old ink.
Mar 5, 2025
Mar 5, 2025 at 1:38 PM UTC
You left at sunset, so I
took some photos,
hoping to fill
the gaping hole
with your fading shadow.
Nov 26, 2024
Nov 26, 2024 at 12:20 PM UTC
My photos of her
presence: the pile of dishes,
the untidy bed.
Oct 28, 2024
Oct 28, 2024 at 4:59 AM UTC
Awkwardly he holds
my hand, just like in photos --
from the olden times.
Aug 26, 2024
Aug 26, 2024 at 4:09 AM UTC
my friends are all laughing
and the weather has been kind
i am about halfway to happy
and it is okay if i look utterly
atrocious in every picture
you've taken of me
i hate my smile with passion
and almost all of the time
but i like to think that
my smile is most
beautiful and genuine
when it is mirrored
by yours
Feb 28, 2024
Feb 28, 2024 at 1:20 AM UTC
I don't have any photos of when I was young
because they look like Chronos holding a gun
I just need slow-mo or time totally undone
or maybe I just need to hold onto someone
because I can't hold on to the before
after bombing all my bridges with C4
so now I walk on the sea floor
wishing I could see more
but all I see is myself as an aquatic gorilla
after spending too much time with Poseidon
precariously between Charybdis and Scylla
as pictures make me look more like Joe Biden
while I feel like I'm the one with the trident
but I'm just Janus' migrant
and that guy is a tyrant
because no matter which way he's facing
he can always find someone to replace me.
So I don't ever take pictures
because they give time a fixture
from which to taunt me like a trickster
showing me the different colors in the mixture
like a lowkey Loki
giving me the okie-dokie
luring me into moseying moping
leisurely leading to rope-a-doping
a mirror-morphed bizarro-me dope fiend
wanting to stay in a Kumbhakarna dope dream.
Time is a sausage link
clogging the gothic sink
of a drain we all would think
seems as fast as goblin's wink
so I try to focus on the myopic pink
but always end up finding reasons to drink
the ambrosia of a nova from Krakatoa
the ebbs and flows come and go with intensity
brought by the power of Jehovah
as well as two cameras with which I can see.
Aug 20, 2023
Aug 20, 2023 at 9:52 PM UTC
I’m so siced about the Barbie movie. I just watched the latest trailer. I felt a fluttering in the stummy.
Peter’s birthday was May 1st. “What do you want for your birthday?” I’d asked.
“A flash for my iPhone,” he said. “Your phone already HAS a flash,” I replied, helpfully.
“No,” he explained, “a professional, external flash - they’re much more subtle and variable.”
“What are you going to take pictures of?” I asked. “You,” he said, smiling slyly.
“Me!?” I said, with a wrinkled nose, somewhat alarmed. “You don’t take pictures of ME.”
“Not usually,” he admitted, “but we’re going to Paris and the snaps will look better with a flash.” “Just ME?” I asked, “What about some ussies?” “We’ll take snaps of us, but you’ll have savage new pics for your poetry sites.” So, Peter got his flash and he’s taken a baZillion pix.
“Smile,” click, (iPhones don’t always click, so the click’s a writer’s dramatic effect)
Peter takes bursts of 50 pix at a time and only one in fifty turns out looking good (my opinion).
“Look this way,” click “toss your hair,” click. Apparently salads and my hair are better ‘tossed.’
So now we’re in Paris, but before we can take our tourist pic, I must lean over, like I’m going to throw up and comb my hair forward, so when I flip it back, it will appear fluffy.
“Look sad, look happy, try not to look so drunk, look **** he asks. “You’re kidding,” I replied. I exist only in his view finder.
“Just part your lips slightly and look vacuous,” he advises.
“Can I DO both at once?” I asked, as if challenged by a scientific equation.
“Don’t roll your eyes,” he said. Today, he was ‘the serious artist’. I’d never want to be a model.
Finally, I’d had enough constant photography and I just started looking moody. Peter seemed not to notice.
I read somewhere that when you smile, the activated muscles of your face actually improve your mood. Or something like that. Anyway, I’m trying to deepfake myself and smile my way to happiness. I ordinarily think of myself as tough, but lately, I’m soft.
A Yale counselor once told me that sometimes we tell ourselves a story and we just hold on to that version of things until it feels true. I have to stop thinking I’m on the edge of a deep, blue loneliness. I need to get on a metaphysical bike and ride away from my sad-self.
Later, when we’re back at the hotel, Peter was reading in the living room and I was lying on the bed, watching another Heraclee Beach, sapphire and ruby, sundown through the hotel windows. Peter came looking for me. He had a book in one hand, his place saved with his index finger.
“What are you doing?” He asked, lightly. “Want to go out to dinner or get room service?”
“I’m thinking thoughts.”
“What kind of thoughts? He asked, taking a seat on a desk chair he’d rolled over. Now I’m watching his face and he’s watching mine.
“You know how, everyday, at school, we tell each other everything that happened?” Peter nodded. “Which, of course,” I’d continued, “is impossible, but it’s as if we’re having experiences just so we could discuss them later - share them. It’s like, when we aren't together, it isn’t real life.”
“So..” he said, verbally prodding me on.
My voice felt thick, like it knew I wouldn't say things right. “Well, I’m two me’s now, I’m split right down the middle. Before you, things were easy. I was becoming Dr. Me, I had one goal, things were simple,” I shrugged, “but now, there's the me that’s going to be a doctor and the me that needs you.” I can’t seem to take my eyes off his face.
He touched my foot and wiggled it a little. “You don’t have to figure out the future right NOW, Mz overachiever.” He said in his soft, western drawl, “You can’t wrestle the future into orderly submission, like a chemistry test - we don’t have enough data (says mr. physics). Anyway, don’t we have forty or fifty years to figure it out?”
Suddenly, my head felt clearer than it had for days. I chuckled. I may have had my hand over my mouth and a smile was so big it hurt my face.
“You were very patient to put up with me today,” I said, turning slightly and quietly serious.
“You be you,” he said, smiling bigly back, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Then I got serious. “Do you think we can find barbecue?”
“But of course!” he said, in a fake French accent, like Lemiure, in ‘Beauty and the Beast.’
Jun 24, 2023
Jun 24, 2023 at 11:32 PM UTC
One day my young niece was showing me some photos of herself and her
friends on her phone
She had loads and loads of these photos
I was thinking to myself I don't think anyone's taken a photo of me in forty
years,
Then I thought what'd happen if I got famous and someone wanted to write
my biography (would be a short book)
And they'd say Give us some of your old photos to stick in the Book
And of course, I'd have a problem, I'd have no photos to give them,
Then I remembered there was this Novelty Joke shop in town
They had a great collection of all these different kinds of wigs
I thought maybe I could buy a few wigs then stage a few photos
Pretend they were from earlier days,
Yea, I could get an Elvis wig with the sideburns, I could say that was my
Rockabilly stage
Then I could get a big Long Hair wig and say That was my Hard Rock
phase,
I could get a Mohican wig and say Well that was what I looked like when I
was a Punk Rocker
And Hey! Maybe I could get one of those lovely big blonde Dolly
Parton type wigs
I could say
"Well that Summer I was listening to a lot of Country music".
Mar 15, 2023
Mar 15, 2023 at 12:49 PM UTC
Were we lovers
Or only good friends
I still don't know
Although in the same timezone
But somehow always in different seasons
We seem to miss one another
Like ships passing in the night
You seem to be doing well
Or so your pictures say
One never knows with you
Using your smile as a guise
But your eyes give you away
You are more transparent than you think
Wrapped in cellophane you are
Aug 25, 2022
Aug 25, 2022 at 7:53 AM UTC
i think the worst thing
is never knowing how
many photos of us
you had on your phone;
while im sitting here
ruminating how
after
657
moments
i ended up alone.
Jun 14, 2022
Jun 14, 2022 at 7:56 AM UTC
Staring at my return ticket
to the past
My sunset in a wine glass
Hazy but wondrous
Some things stay even one departs
Jun 9, 2022
Jun 9, 2022 at 10:30 AM UTC
Diving deep into
The photograph
I see who you are
Touching the surface
With fingertips
Unable to feel
The warmth of your skin
Tracing your face
Touching your chin
Fully submerged in
The pool of your
Stare
I feel who you are
Deep in my heart
Mar 2, 2022
Mar 2, 2022 at 4:37 PM UTC
i used to hate having
my photo taken
to see every flaw and imperfection on display.
i used to hate
the photos taken
the ones you glued into our scrapbook.
but now?
i love the photos given
& what they do to me.
for before
it felt like memories stolen
a painful reminder of
love
lost
today?
it reminds me of memories given
all the love we gave
it's scrapbooked in my memory
and brings a smile to my brain
so thank you for the photos taken
as they no longer bring me any pain.
Jan 19, 2022
Jan 19, 2022 at 4:11 PM UTC
I bought a Leica camera
someone said
it must take really great pictures
I sat and watched it
for over an hour
it never left my bag
Aug 13, 2021
Aug 13, 2021 at 2:36 PM UTC
I stare at the pictures of us
I still have them on my wall
May 18, 2021
May 18, 2021 at 7:13 PM UTC
you told me it was over
i hear it loud and clear
but deleting our messages
broke my heart
taking down our pictures on my wall
hurt like hell
and giving back your stuff
was unimaginably painful
until i had no trace left of you but the memories
then i knew, it was over
Feb 23, 2021
Feb 23, 2021 at 8:52 PM UTC
Photographs tell our story
About good times and days of glory
Of relationships that didn't last
They're like a time machine to our past
They're the memories of places we've been
And gives us a chance to visit them again
They'll show our kids who haven't a clue
That we were young once too
Feb 10, 2021
Feb 10, 2021 at 7:49 AM UTC
Write down everything
you hate about them and burn
it with the photos
11:37 AM
24/12/20
Dec 23, 2020
Dec 23, 2020 at 7:38 PM UTC
Pope John Paul II
maybe
Johnny P the Deuce
(to his friends)
empassions an Easter sermon
years before the Passion
or millennia after
to Jane Fonda
feathered red and nicotine stained
watching the city burn
one
station wagon
at
a
time
Oct 24, 2020
Oct 24, 2020 at 12:14 AM UTC
Let’s take a ride
With photos as our guide
Not that they are enough
But they bring out all the stuff
Those collection of instances
Those endearing reminiscences
Each picture tells a tale
Dragging us on its trail
More than anything else
It subjects your inner self
You contemplate with a new perspective
And gradually become introspective
Those memories caress you
When you are lost and feeling blue
The journey ends up to meet yourself
Getting the push to move forward oneself.
Aug 22, 2020
Aug 22, 2020 at 4:57 AM UTC