They told me to smile
like this was simple.
Tilt your head a little.
Not too much.
Shoulders down.
Chin up.
Try not to look stiff.
Try not to look fake.
Try not to blink.
Try to look like yourself,
only better.
That may be the whole joke
of senior pictures.
A final official lie
where you are expected to look cheerful, finished, fit for framing,
right while your insides are split clean down the middle
between get me out of here
and do not make me leave.
I put on the shirt.
I combed my hair.
I gave the camera something close enough to a smile
that nobody complained.
Yet the whole time I kept thinking
this is not me.
Not the full one.
Not the one who drives too far at night.
Not the one who writes bad poems in the margins of history notes.
Not the one who gets mean in the mirror.
Not the one who wants more from life
than he can name without sounding foolish.
Not the one who is scared of leaving town
and scared of staying till his face sets into place here forever.
The camera got a version.
A useful one.
Mothers like it.
Yearbooks can handle it.
Future people will point and say
there he is.
No.
There is one second of me
wearing a borrowed expression
while a flashbulb turned my confusion into proof.