Not Broken, Just Bent.

It's glossy and sleek
light lifts sparkle and shine
a perfect likeness
perfectly displayed in a flat black gallery frame.
It is displayed proudly, virtually
it can be found from anywhere in the world
with a keyword search

It's crumbling
in my hands, in the air
dusty particles drift on shafts of light.
It's yellowed, the pigments faded
the laughing subjects indistinct.
I drink in the image, and wonder
turning it over, hoping that someone, sometime
thought to note who they were.

Long gone to ground
their happiness still sparkles
from behind the restless slide of time.
Then this image was not special.
No date scrawled on the back,
no names, no clues.

The idea of metadata is not new.
Will the future feel the wonder of bridged time over old pixels,
as I do with your decaying photograph?