“Now” (Edited Poem)

I was digging through an archive of old photographs in hopes of filling the empty album,

here I came across a photo dated fifteen years back,

I am twenty years old,

for the first time in my life I felt exposed,

I began to cry,

the 4x 6 was occupied by four people I had no recollection of knowing,

including myself,

growing together should have been the focus,

how did we stray from hopeful to hopeless?

The four of us pose on a white wicker bench wearing our best smiles,

two are faking a smile.

I wonder if through the camera lens the photographer can sense the same?

A lingering sense of pain,

none the less we keep our smug smiles,

as he shoots us for a while,

our parent’s facades begin to hurt.

He chants, “let me see those hundred watt smiles!”

so we gave it our best shot,

as any human would,

how I used to wish they could.

I was too young to understand,

but now I am grown,

and my brother, a man.

The same year the photograph was taken my parents filed for divorce.

My father would say let me give the world to you,

and my mother would say the world is not enough.

She was not patient,

she could not see,

her latent actions resulted in what came to be.

Forget.

Forget regret, forget what if?

Forget back then,

anger is no one’s friend,

revel in the now.

The love in the photograph is lost,

but can still be found.

Within ourselves,

be grateful,

at least we have our health.

Today I know it happened for a reason,

today I stop looking from outward in,

allow myself to embrace the wind.