Exposure
I keep scraps of memories in the form of gig tickets, dress labels, paper wristbands and stuff. I sort through them every now and again and stick them in this book. In doing this one day, I came across a photograph. These days everything is digital and it’s easy to forget photographs as they’re always replaced by the latest ones and they all look the same anyway. This photograph was special though; it was a Polaroid. They want to change the name now, to rebrand it. It makes me sad for some reason, and I guess it’s kind of ironic, the timing, me finding this photograph. It’s like when you click the button and you wave the picture as the light hits the surface and you don’t really know why you do it, but you think it will make it become clearer quicker. It doesn’t though, you have to wait.
Time is such an odd concept. I don’t think I understand it. So much has changed since this photograph that I hardly recognise it. You seem like a stranger now: you are a stranger now. I used to be able to tell it was you from the back of your head, the way you moved your legs when walking, the movement of your hand, occasionally, as you would flick your hair out of your face. I don’t know who was to blame. I blamed you for so long because you were the one that changed and I just stayed the same. Now, after so long, I see it from the outside and maybe it wasn’t your fault that you changed. People grow apart. It happens. Maybe it just wasn’t anybody’s fault.
It just frustrated me at the time. We used to talk non-stop and be always laughing, always smiling, in between kisses. It wasn’t sudden, it kind of happened without us being aware. Gradually we had less and less to say to one another. We’d ask how one another were, answered in single words and didn’t even seem to care to ask for more. I used to cry at night because I wanted it to go back to how it was. It made me angry, so, we had to end. I see that now. I can smile at the photograph but I don’t want to go back anymore. I stuck it in my book and closed it shut.
* Carmina Masoliver-Marlow is UEA student from South West London and describes herself as somewhere between a page poet and performance poet. www.myspace.com/carminalittlesongs
