Legacies Poem by Maddi Eden

Photographs are happy
Lies; they bring back false memories
And smiles that never were.

They recall dusty skins of ourselves –
We thought we’d shed them long ago
But here is the laughing evidence.

At the time we argued, frowned, but when something is to be
Recorded in the annals of our lives
We ‘grit our teeth’ and smile.

Later glazed memories and reluctant minds
Allow false recollection, aided
By these mendacious schemers.

You rifle through the dusty sheaves
One person in dungarees, you are sure you once loved, jumps out –
Their voice, their personality eludes you, but their counterfeit grin endures.

For an instant you stop and think – is there something fickle
About photography? Need it be so fallacious?
Should we make an effort to capture the moment, rather than what we want to remember?

Nowadays, it is yet more abandoned: you can condemn whatever
Photographs do not flatter, whatever
Photographs tell the truth.

But interrupted by a clumsy child with a greedy camera –
Clamouring, grasping, he steals a part of you with every flash
Wait, you exclaim without thinking, let me fix my hair.

Calmly, without a shimmer of irony, you begin the ritual again
And again and again; do you not realise
That this is how you will be remembered?