Other People's Pictures Poem by Maya Hanson

The boy in my photograph
smiles up at me,
living in another world
and we barely brush galaxies as we
walk past each other in the universe's hallway.

Do you ever wonder
how many of other people's pictures you're in?
My soul's split up into a million pieces,
fighting for worth in a world made of snapshot memories.

Pictures of street corners and gardens and little boxes
that held me up in those moments
My ghost pauses,
holding slivers of other realities and
dragging them into every day I wake up.

How much more vivid would I be
if I wasn't in other people's pictures?
Little bits of blue scattered across the world,
silver accents where I lit a candle in the dark
and crimson blood droplets where my armor broke upon the ground.

But maybe that boy in my picture is
filling me up with a part of his half smile,
giving me just a fraction of the safety of his arms,
lending me the brighter side
that I had when I was with him.

Maybe those snapshot memories keep me alive,
and my pieces of blue stride along the globe like little elves
spilling love into cracks where it wasn't before,
drifting words like dandelions into the sky-
and all because I'm in
other people's pictures.