Old photographs still look like us.
The eyes and the grin are familiar.
Our names are on the back.
Nothing in the picture became false.
It stopped being current while we kept moving.
We know that about photographs.
We don't ask one how we should look today.
We treat memory differently.
We keep the old version close
and let it decide what we're like now.
Letting that person go can feel ungrateful.
They were real. Their choices brought us here.
The picture holds all of that.
It doesn't need us to keep posing.
A dozen versions have already gone this way.
Nobody marked the day.
The picture keeps who we were.
So we don't have to.
