Picture Perfect

Picture Perfect

There was once a gilded frame

It gleamed silver and its edges were embellished

It held a photograph

A cherished memory

Caught in a shutter snap

And a camera flash

There was a smile

A familiar place

A beloved face

A character out of place

A moment

A piece of time

An angle, a light, a line

Color, and black and white

Sepia tones and twilight

Before you could know

The photo began to grow

Suddenly

There were new memories

Some blurry

Some focused into purity

And some that you were

Not even sure

What they were supposed to be

But that is the nature of memory

It’s fuzzy

And amazing

It is truth and it is lies

It continues on

Even as the moment dies

It is everything we are

And yet nothing we can touch

Whether it exists or not

Doesn’t matter much

Because we are nothing but a collection

Nothing but a collage

And irrelevance is the consequence

Or the cause

So you may try to place them in a frame

These photographs

But when recollection is the game

If you can remember your name

And see behind your eyes

In the endless universe of your mind

You will realize that picture perfect

Is a joke of fate quite cruel

Because each picture is seen

Through vision in the extreme

Because the memory

Is only what is felt to you

So place them in a gilded frame

And soon it will shatter

It is the moments that make up life

Not the display that matters