The photos lie.
I cannot say how or why
what possible motivation
they might have to
tell their tales of a thousand deceitful words apiece
but they are surely most untrue.
The pictures are faking it.
I never looked like that.
I was never so thin.

I’d remember
if I was ever so lovely
so lithe
so luxurious in movement
and musical in memory.
If I had ever been anything like that
I should know.
I was there, after all.
I would know
who I was back then.

In those days
I was a horror.
I was a toad.
I weighed a hundred stone more
than I should have
and the way the chin-sweat would glitter
in the moonlight…
that I remember well.
Where is that in all the pictures?
How has Kodak hidden my glittery chins?

What has been shown
in those images
is no me I have ever seen.
I do not know him.
Was I familiar with this boy,
I would have also been aware of his lovers
and his friends,
those that adored him,
and everyone knows full well
what a monster I have always been,
how unknown and unloved,
so these pictures
clearly
cannot be true.

The photos lie
and I cannot countenance
their existence
for if they are allowed,
what then will become the story
of my history?