If we laugh and photograph ourselves
which is difficult but not impossible
we create a system for analysing humour
and days later we are stuck with it
like Marxism too quickly understood
and thus betrayed. Is a smile a role?
The snapshots make a guess, and unavoidably
a complex answer is building up inside us

conditioned by empiricism. We love and burn
just for a year or so, then take those photos
and lose a precious ability and a sweetheart
and nothing seems the same, ever again.
This dogging loss chews at my heel and soon
years later, we are less than what we knew.