Souvenir.

When we see memories we want to go back and it hurts.
This is why we store old photographs inside boxes in closets
at least as much as we frame them shinily for the mantlepiece.
We don’t hide them, we hide from them, because we’re not ready
to confront the faces of the people on the other side of all that time.
We save it for another day, when we’ll know how to meet our gaze.
But that sunlit afternoon when we dust the shadows off our faces
isn’t waiting in the future. We know this. It already came and went
and passed away. It happened long ago.