Pictures At An Exhibition
by Yash Seyedbagheri

 

 

 

Friends comment on my apartment.

Where are the family photos?

Questions dance across empty spaces.

I buy picture frames with stock photos. A smiling mother and father. Older sister with cat-eye glasses.

This is a family that hasn’t been torn apart by drink. Wanderlust. Reinvention. Father radiates control. A realtor? Mother could be a teacher, beatific, wise. Sister, an adorkable nerd, named Betty.

Normalcy taunts daily, interspersed with ghosts of arguments. Shattered glasses.  Fights over flatscreen TVs. CD collections. Everything fought over except children.

I smash the picture frames against the wall. Tear stock photos, piece by piece.

Fragments remain.

 

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