Ligo Haibun Challenge based on Jim Croce songs "Photographs and Memories""New York's Not My Home"
I sit in the empty house, sifting through old photographs, wondering if and when these times existed. Tattered memorabilia, faded roses now brittle like my memories. Jim Croce keeps me company in my misery. The people in these photos, strangers to my heart. I cannot tell for sure if someone hasn’t switched them out ...can’t remember such happy times. They look vaguely familiar, like old black and whites of distant relatives. False memories you think you might remember because you’ve heard the stories time and again. Photographs and Memories plays and the verse “Morning walks and bedroom talks are how I loved you then” reminds me of how we use to read to each other, take long walks and talk. Seems like a lifetime ago; sometime before we said, “I do,” before Jekyll turned to Hyde.
I organize the photos pausing as the next album drops and Jim sings more to my pain. Tears spill and drop on the photo of you smiling. The album so worn it sticks and repeats after “I gotta get out of here, I’m so alone”. --so alone, so alone, so alone... I pack up the memories, dust myself off, go for a walk, change my perspective. At last I close up.the record player, pop in a tape and blast Ricky Lee Jones as I dance through my chores preparing for my children to return. Now there is joy, I never will regret.
old photographs
static reminders
of past I cannot change
old vinyl records
pull on my heartstrings
another dusty rose
dusty photos
draw me into the past
but can’t hold my heart
