Frozen in Time
On old photographs, forgotten lives, and the strange tenderness of remembering people you've outgrown.
Every now and then I’ll find a photo from a version of myself I’d almost forgotten. The clothes are wrong, the hair is wrong, the face is younger in a way I don’t remember being. And there’s almost always someone next to me whose name I have to try to recall.
This poem came from one of those finds.
I forgot about you
And the times we shared
Until I rummaged through
Those old photographs
Of me and you
Little moments
Forever frozen in time
They’re your memories
And they are mine
Sometimes I forget
About these lives I used to live
But I can look back on them now
Fondly, without regret
Knowing I needed you once
Like a cassette
Some people are cassettes. They were the medium for a particular era of your life — the way you got from one self to the next — and then you outgrew the format, and they receded.
That’s not a tragedy. It’s just how it works. The fondness without the regret is the prize you get for living long enough to see it.
— JTC