The Family Photo Album

To all of my near and far destinations, 

I carry an old photo album.

Not too bulky,

but not thin in any respect. 

I grew up to the daunting jingle of my mother's voice incessantly reminding me 

that we eventually forget everything. 

I always thought that she had a perpetual fear of dementia,

justified by her losing the appearances of her late parents from her memory.

And while as a youth I have an elephants' memory-

something I'd never ask for again in the next life-

I know that remembering wil never be enough.

A crystal clear motion picture will never be something to be lived in.

I know why she wants everything that she lost back.

And in turn she makes me a time-machine of her shaky snapshots,

she lifts a burden with her smiling or teary expression of a moment.

Recollections on all of its pages, each one compeltely different,

even if they were taken within disparate seconds of each other

by my own indifferent hands. 

I usually still despise taking pictures, but I know that on a level,

she needs them.

We all have some sort of anchor that reminds us of who we are.

In a sea of indentities, I suppose I forgot that she may have lost hers.

Perhaps I can't understand it right now because I don't yet have a solid identity.

On occasion, I ponder what it might be like to never develop one. 

No name plastered for action to be tied to.

For this particular moment, I'm enjoying the prospect of being under the radar,

nothing to permanent aside from my memories and phtographs. 

Perhaps I dislike the confrontation of the

artificial light sprung onto my eyes by the flash. 

"Pictures are memories" she chants,

and perhaps I hate them because 

I have so much that I don't wish to remember. 

Human Dignity + Compassion = Peace.