Box It Up

Today I decided to look through my box of photographs. You know, it has always been funny to me how photographs are so fact yet they seem to bring up exact moments and feelings. They encapsulate a particular moment of a particular time at a particular place. They all are just little images that have the power to reshape your memory and make you believe a moment was more pleasant than it truly was.

I sat in the morning sun puffing a cigarette. The window was open and it was one degree celsius. Who cared? It was just me and all the rather artificial smiles on the pictures. The sun felt good on my back. Her warmth rested there almost as if she were trying to tell me all was fine.

Pictures of us in our nice home in Bath with Julia’s garden and our table just for tea. There was Angelica at her 11th birthday. That was the day I got the letter and we got in a fight over the surprise clown I hired to come and juggle for the little ones and the doll I got for Angelica. Julia said I didn’t know her at all and that maybe if I were not working all the fucking time, I would be able to know when my daughter was happy and when she wasn’t.

In all the photos we are smiling and hugging each other like all is dandy and well. It never was.

I felt a sudden swell and soreness on my lips and I spat out the bud of my cigarette onto the photo of Julia putting her makeup on the morning of our wedding. In that photo, I saw the excited and elegant Julia… that was before my bud fell and smothered her face. Now it would be the photo of reminded me of the said man who sat at his cold table in the sun and reminisced over the life he lost.

I quickly threw all my memories in that shoe box and shoved it in the hallway closet. No need to remember what’s stuck in the past. Pictures are just reminders of moments you no longer have. Utterly depressing rubbish.