Displacement

You’ve been gone
Half a lifetime
Of whomever
You choose,
I have a picture I took
As a child,
The camera
Your gift to me,
You in the winter sunshine
Against the old red wall,
A solid presence,
A shadow cast,
The bricks still stand
But the space
You stood
Has closed
In on itself,
Neither empty, nor full,
I move through it
and not around it,
Displacing
An echo of atoms,
The imprint I framed,
Bleached by the light,
As memories become
A history
To recount to those
Who do not care;
And I wonder,
Who it will be
Taking up the places
Where I am now,
And once was.