Pareidolia

Pictures of old girlfriends
I put them in a box
The relationships and my emotions about them
The photos hid in a computer folder
Indexed and catalogued
A box of ones and zeros

Just because you close a wound
Does not stop it hurting
Memories jostling to be ghosts or the moved on
But memories are scabs
Always ready to be picked over
To bleed
Never allowed time to turn into scars
And pictures just seemed like a bad idea

Do faces in those old photographs
Taken to immortalize a moment in time
Think about what was?
Do they have their own scabs to pick over
Or are there just scars
Memory of time passed and little else

But maybe it’s time to let go
Time to put down the carried torches
Extinguish the flames that were once fuel

So now the pictures are in frames
Hung on walls
They are my scars
And if thoughts linger too much…
there is pain
But doesn’t that validate what we once had?
Memories of the good and the bad

Running away was always cowardice
Hiding not that much better
So it is time for the pictures to see the light of day
For my acknowledgement of their part
In my story
And if it hurts
The melancholy is to be treasured
Like the faces on the wall.

_{Image by Bianca Van Dijk from Pixabay}