You scan the small and tatty Polaroid.
It's you, much younger, not so many lines.
A face of innocence that time's destroyed?
No, that's wet rhetoric. Look closer. Signs
Of what you are today lurk in the cloyed
And knowing smile that somehow undermines
The otherwise not-offputting effect.
This is a face en route to being wrecked.

The clothes are as familiar as the face,
And on the back your name is neatly printed.
The background's blurred. You cannot place the place,
And have no notion who it was who squinted
Through a cheap viewfinder to catch the trace
Of youthful vanity that smugly glinted
Out of your eyes. Who kept this snap? What for?
Maybe the book it fell from will say more.

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