ashes on polaroids

Ashes on polaroids scattered across my bedroom floor like burnt memories refusing burial

Every photograph curled at the edges from cigarette heat and trembling hands

Faces frozen smiling beneath chemical nostalgia while real life rotted somewhere off camera

Funny how pictures preserve moments but never the emotional aftermath

Motherfucker we looked immortal in those snapshots

Cheap liquor glowing amber beneath apartment lights

Friends laughing loud enough to drown our private catastrophes temporarily

Her head resting against my shoulder like forever wasn’t already decomposing quietly behind the scenes

Now there’s ashes on polaroids

Tiny grey remnants of everything we swore mattered eternally

Smoke rising from burned corners like prayers escaping damaged lungs

The room smelling like fire, dust, and unresolved grief

Bitch I started burning memories because keeping them felt heavier than destroying them

Not out of anger

More like spiritual exhaustion

Like trying to clean ghosts from the walls before they fully possessed the atmosphere

Like cutting emotional wires before they electrocuted me again

One photo showed us outside a church after midnight

She wore black lipstick and innocence damaged beautifully by experience

I wore a leather jacket hiding bruises nobody asked about

We looked like runaway saints escaping heaven together

Another captured my friend before addiction hollowed him completely

Eyes still bright

Smile still genuine

Before needles and loneliness turned his spirit into abandoned architecture

Before funerals replaced future plans permanently

Fuck memory is cruel because it edits pain aesthetically over time

Makes destruction look poetic beneath soft lighting and distance

Turns trauma into vintage colors and meaningful soundtracks

Meanwhile the actual experience felt messy as blood on bathroom tiles

I sat cross legged on the floor with a lighter in one hand

Polaroids spread around me like tarot cards predicting emotional collapse

Each image another tiny coffin preserving pieces of myself I no longer recognized

Each smile another lie nobody noticed quickly enough

The apartment stayed silent except for crackling paper and passing traffic outside

City lights bleeding through blinds like artificial halos across the walls

Somewhere nearby a couple argued violently through thin concrete

Love always sounds closest to warfare before it dies completely

Ashes on polaroids

That’s what nostalgia becomes eventually

Not warmth

Not comfort

Just evidence that happiness once existed briefly before reality reclaimed everything violently

I remember her perfume vividly in those days

Cherry smoke and expensive sadness

She used to kiss my forehead after panic attacks like blessing cursed scripture

Now even her absence carries emotional fingerprints across my nervous system

Motherfucker I tried throwing the photos away normally first

Couldn’t do it

Something about physically destroying memories felt more honest than abandoning them quietly in trash bags

Like grief deserves ceremony even when nobody survives it properly

One picture almost made me stop

We were lying on motel sheets laughing at absolutely nothing

No performances

No trauma bonding

No manipulative silence

Just two exhausted souls accidentally happy for one fragile second

That image hurt worse than betrayal ever could

Because it proved love had been real at least temporarily

And temporary beauty might be the cruelest thing God invented

Giving humans glimpses of eternity inside moments guaranteed to disappear afterward

The flame touched the corner slowly

Orange light eating through our smiling faces with terrifying elegance

Smoke curling upward like departed spirits

And suddenly I felt guilty for surviving memories other people still lived inside emotionally

Bitch people talk about moving on like it’s linear

Like healing means clean endings and inspirational growth

Truth is some nights you sit alone burning photographs because your chest can’t carry the weight anymore

Truth is grief mutates instead of leaving

I kept one polaroid untouched beside the others’ ashes

Just one

Her standing beneath rain outside a convenience store at 2 AM

Eyes tired

Smile crooked

Hands buried inside my hoodie sleeves

That photo felt sacred somehow

Not because the relationship succeeded

But because it captured us honestly

Two broken motherfuckers trying desperately to keep each other warm in a freezing world

Outside thunder rolled across the skyline slow as divine anger

Rain started hitting the windows aggressively

The room flickering between darkness and lightning like unstable memory itself

Even nature looked emotionally overwhelmed tonight

Ashes covered my fingertips by then

Grey dust staining my skin like evidence from emotional crimes

I rubbed them together absentmindedly thinking about mortality

Thinking about how eventually every relationship becomes either memory or lesson

Sometimes both simultaneously

The lighter finally died in my hand

Tiny flame surrendering after too much destruction

I sat there surrounded by smoke and half burned nostalgia

Breathing heavily like someone who survived spiritual surgery without anesthesia

And somewhere beneath all that exhaustion

I realized the photos weren’t what haunted me most

It was the person I became while loving everyone in them

The softer version of myself

The hopeful version

The motherfucker who still believed intimacy could save him from his own darkness before reality corrected that illusion permanently