Candid

You used to laugh when no one was watching.

A sound needing no witness to be true.

No agenda to be more than what was reflected.

Encumbered only by an urge to be heard back, echoing off the expanse in ambience.

Flash,

forward to when the camera changed you with a glance.

Turned your innocence to fashion.

A touch it knew would alter you.

Its fish-eyed lens,

a tomorrow.

With a price.

Flash,

back to when you came as you were.

Creased and unfolded. Off-brand

Bare as the soul,

unrehearsed.

Without asking to be remembered or replayed.

Spontaneous commotion and a black hat for spare change.

Wild in a moment not rated for its content but marveled for its authenticity. For its tangled roots. For its fever.

You are now a vaporwave daydream.

Looped.

A thing based on itself and missing the point.

I can't find you the way I held you once.

Carelessly,

so numb to the fact that one day you would only live in the lens that stole you.

Survived by a distortion once the vivid glimpse of its time. Product of a present that didn't keep its promise as future.

Now,

even loneliness has a voyeur.

I wept.

I recorded.

Uploaded.

Reality....

You are loved...

and you are missed.