Frames

Have you ever looked at a photograph of a person you loved and felt like you were looking at a stranger? Like you know every line on that face, you know how they merge when the person laughs - but then you look at a photograph, and all you can think about is the times they must have laughed when you weren't around. Parts of their life that are exclusive of you.

Look again, maybe you'll see. That this photograph too is no special memento, but rather like the other pictures you chance to see nestled in the folds of an already greying newspaper. Smiling eternal frozen smiles, crying everlasting obituaries, meaningless but made meaning of with accompanying text explaining, justifying, accounting for their emotions and their actions.

Glanced at today, smugly knowing your life isn't touched by it, making the appropriate 'tsks' when you see deaths, smiling at some new celebrity gossip. A life. A statistic. A blurb. a number.

Turn the page, and it's gone.