Photographs

The shutter 
clicked
and into my
hands fell your
soul on a square,
spit from the 
mouth of a 
ravenous beast.


Your indents and 
features aligned
in the light,
already fading
and splotched
where we touched the 
drying ink accidently,
where you shook it
to dry faster.


A miniature of
your body,
I held in it another
piece of you,
had tacked it in there
with a machine
to make you stay forever.


Along the walls of my 
house hung on clotheslines
the bits and pieces
of who I had known,
and your face would surface
and disappear
in the crowd, 
all lined up 
and waiting.


Waiting to
fly off, take wing
out my windows,
as one by one
their counterparts 
faded away
in the fogs.


But always on my 
halls they were captured
in some small way.


And one day
you jumped out my window
and flew across
the seas,
but your soul
didn't stay with me.


The photos
faltered, gave up 
the struggles
of reigning you in,
and as you were
soon to be lost,


I burnt the squares
of you and let the free.