I used to love to watch Mitch Hedberg on YouTube,
laughing even though I knew the punch lines.
Like, when he talks about a friend who said to him,
“Here’s a picture of me when I was younger.”
And Mitch says,
“Every picture of you is when you
were younger.”
I like Mitch’s brand of comedy
(which he took from us for one last high)
but today I’ve been browsing
my picture files and
that particular line has turned
sad and heavy.
All of my photos are
an earlier version of my world.
The faces that are there,
over and over. Pictures of
Morgan and Angie and Nina.
And my father. They’re like the
Before Side of the story of my life.
It strikes me that the
After Side is empty—
there’s not a single picture
of my life now.
I am
emptied of so much.
I try not to think about the losses—
the ones I couldn’t prevent and
the ones I could.