The Album of Good

 

The Album of Good

Inside the dusty album is who I am,
what people will see.
My heritage lives on every page.

The picture of me in Mom's flowerbed:
I was three and had ripped apart her
chrysanthemums. How angry she was, but how
she laughed when she took my picture.

The one of Dad and me in that raggedy, over-stuffed chair,
our heads bent in some kind of conspiracy. We dialed the massive
black telephone to talk with Grandma and Grandpa. I was ten.
Their voices crackled like bits of the china plate I broke that October.

My high school graduation day: me wearing the ugly red robe
and awkward hat that kept falling off; the little flip of my hair.
My virginity lost to some drunk college boy. I don't remember
his name. The baby would have been seventeen now.

Pictures make you realize how stupid you really were.
I wipe the black leather cover clean,
grateful no one can see my mistakes.