Photo by Federico Bottos via Unsplash

The Photograph

It doesn’t matter what
we should have argued about.
Talking was something
we couldn’t or wouldn’t do.
We walked through a meadow instead,
you slightly ahead and I
taking pictures of things I wanted
to remember, including that bloody
sunset. The flowers parted
before you and so did the tall
ferns and the trees
and after them the mountains,
splitting cleanly in two
to let you pass, and as you did,
closing behind you,
seamlessly, like an eyelid,
a forest of eyelashes blinking out
any trace of your passage.
I barely had time for one
last snapshot, an exercise in memory,
the pale blot of a hand,
possibly yours, raised to stave off
the click of the shutter.