photographic memories

sepia tones remain fashionable
the indelibly happy places.
that you yearn to revisit.replay.relive.
experience tells you
you can keep going back
the same light. the same camera.
the same models - old friends
mossy fences, corrugated loves
the same pre monsoon stickiness
(or winter drowsiness).
 
autofocus. click.
there you go.
got it.
you are seven again.
or sixteen. twenty-four.
at the closed gate you jumped over
for a midnight snack at the hawkers.
on the highest rock
of a lush campus never yours
looking out at the deserted open air theatre.
any one of numbered memories.

but when the picture develops
in that little dark room
at the far end of your mind
accessible only through a sulphurous tunnel
whose bend
(that may or may not be its end)
finds no light
as you immerse the paper in the solution
that holds the key to your own grayscale hopes
unexpectedly but unsurprisingly
what will emerge on that once blank slate
will be an original.
a clear descendant of its predecessor.
should you be so lucky.
but all too often
unburdened by that legacy.

at that moment you will find yourself
retreating unwillingly
unwittingly from that dark room
exposed to the dense realisation
(without a trace of nostalgic remorse)
that the lens has changed.
you have changed.
and that has altered everything.

cataract eyes will blur all you once knew
and the present will always be
a watered down image
of the past you struggle
to revisit.replay.relive.