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 them 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 from nights in Soho bars,
A weekend in the country when she borrowed 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.

And oh, oh, oh, where did it go, go, go?
I used to 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.
The 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 just a way of looking past the truth:

We're all fading away.
A 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 the rest is a small locked box of
Undeveloped films and photographs.