For sad people like us
it helps to have pictures—
or rather, new pictures
to displace familiar ones.
Old pictures don’t change.
I once had a picture
of a chicken in mid-flight.
I used to laugh at it.
Now it seems utterly banal
compared to the picture
of you tackling your sister.
In it, you are goofy-gorgeous.
I used to think of life
as an ocean of pictures;
these days I think of it
as a river in linear motion.
Now you have a picture
of me laughing at my picture
of a chicken in mid-flight
and maybe a picture
of me typing this poem.
Where will you put them?
