Writing: Jess Cowie
Illustration: Isi Williams
Yesterday a photo fell
From the blue-tacked, bric-a-brac
Collage I’d stuck beside my bed
Back in September,
And looking at the square
Of wall it left behind
I couldn’t think which
Part of me was missing.
It’s hardly surprising:
There wasn’t any order
To the favourite places, faces
Laughing out across the mesh of
Birthdays and silly hats
I’d hastily assembled
To cover the foreignness
Of a new room
But I thought that I’d miss
The still-life stepping stones
That marked the places
I had been.
When I retrieved it
There was a strange relief
In the familiar shapes
Of that winter walk
On the crags, four figures
Balancing like cranes
Against the city’s
Orange lights below.
I can’t remember
Our wind-snatched conversations:
Only our whipped hair
And flying scarves
And four crescent grins
Were caught and saved
From being forgotten
When we turned
And left the frame.
And if the memory
Wasn’t pressed safely
Onto a piece of photo paper
It would be gone,
Caught up like our lost voices
In the November wind,
To become part of the montage
Of unmarked, unmissed days.
But I wasn’t prepared
For the emptiness the fallen shot
Would leave behind,
For the way the blank space
Would change the bigger picture,
Reshape the frame and
Make the pinned-up memories
Seem less permanent.
And I realised that
In fourteen days
I’ll peel the others
From their unplanned web
And leave the wall as white
And waiting as it was
When I arrived and stuck
My life around me.
There’s a sadness in leaving –
In the knowledge
That things are left behind,
And in the realisation
That some of what’s left
Is left forever, slipping
From the wall of what’s
Remembered, to the wind.
But there’s something
Strangely beautiful
In the thought that those
Stretched-out silhouettes,
Four figures frozen against
A smog-softened sky
Might someday fade from the
Photo paper,
And exist only
In the echoes
Of forgotten laughter
And the blue-tack stains
On these walls.
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