Pictures From Lindsay's Camera Poem by Lindsay King

i can never go back
to what we once were
a picture in time,
many pictures from the past
our entire relationship
in one folder

you were horrible to me
but you were the best

i can still feel the elation
i did as i grabbed onto your arm
looking upwards smiling
and you smiled back
maybe you were proud
that i was yours

and back to the beach
i was just thinking
how we could last forever
you were snapping it into submission
i believed we could make it
i really did

you look so accomplished
graduation day
a smile, a grin
everything you worked so hard for
who would have believed
you spent five years in that hell
just to be a cashier at an auto part store

now would you have believed me
if i had told you right then
that six months later
we'd be over,
never to talk again?
that you're living across the country
with your new fiancée
and i'm sitting here just writing this?

would it have meant less
when we kissed that one time
immortalized on my computer
we were so annoying
we were so cute
we looked so perfect
how did it not last?

i tried to look so strong,
like i was really okay

a picture of you
holding a bottle of vodka
a prelude to the future
a picture of me alone,
you alone
i guess it was all falling apart

how can it all be summed up
in just these photographs?

i wouldn't have believed it,
had you told me
at any point
that you'd end up with someone else,
without me...

that we'd never see the beach again
closing in on the water
a splash on cold feet
a kiss that never should have died
'i love you's'
that couldn't be captured
on camera
never coming back

a time in my life
that had to end
so many embraces
and now i'm so damn cold

it was never meant to be
but you couldn't tell that
by just one look at what once was