Undeveloped Film

Sorting through my things the other day

I found an old film camera that I thought I'd thrown away

But there it was covered in dust

I checked it and the film inside still had a few pictures left

So I just snapped it off and then

I found a place on the high street that could still develop them

I dropped them off and clean forgot,

It wasn't until this morning that I picked the pictures up

And there before my eyes in vivid colour

Pictures of her stood smiling bold on the edge of a cliff by the sea

On the south coast somewhere,

Wind in her hair wrapped against the cold

There were many other pictures in the set,

Most of them were taken in the first months after we met

When we were lovers like happy drunks

Stumbling for each other with each step, each breath in our lungs

Pictures of nights from soho bars

A weekend in the country when she bought my sister's car,

Her naked, serene on a hotel bed

Smiling at the camera, her beauty like a word unsaid

And there before my eyes on the glossy paper

Quiet whispers of something I had lost or put aside for the longest time

The hope that I might find some kind of peace

Oh oh oh where did it go go go

I just don't know exactly where I kept it

There right there under the stairs oh please

Darling I swear swear swear that's where I left it

Secret little things that you keep locked away

In a small wooden box that you barely even mention to yourself

It's not exactly hope, nothing quite as simple as youth

Perhaps it's just a way of looking past the truth

We're all fading away

The truth I can see in the very last frame of that long lost roll of film

A picture of me, a young man holding a camera up to a mirror

And there before my eyes in that old reflection a declaration bold

We won't stay gold, all that's left of her and rest

Is a small locked box of undeveloped films and photographs