What do you see
In the eyes of that child
Was it worth it?
To waste those years
Are you satisfied
With what you made
Is that smile one of pride
In what you are
Or one of naivete
Unassuming of what
You’d be
The reflection through the glass
Of the picture frame
Shifts focus
The eyes of that person
Stare listlessly into yours.

When you died
I thought
I had to make myself
into a memory
So that when it was my turn
no one would forget me
It drove me
to insanity
Knowing I’d never amount
to anything
worth remembering
But I was only 17
incapable of understanding
accepting
what it meant
to be human

Pink and purple streaked sunsets
Painted the sky outside
The car window
As dad drove
Into the night
On the highway home
Those vivid scenes
Distant memories
I haven’t seen in years
Buried in a small town
Off the interstate in Louisiana
All that time
I took for granted
Pieces of old life
Preserved in fragments
By an occasional photograph
Just moments now
Out of time
Complexities reduced to
Still frames
Winds erode my memory
As the years
Keep passing
It will wear them down
To nothing

//I still think of them every single day