Portrait of the Dark

Verse 1

I found inside a forgotten drawer

a portrait covered in dust.

There were faces I had never known,

yet every one stared back at me.

Their eyes held endless winters,

their lips kept words without sound.

And behind every motionless smile,

a story waited for the dark.

Chorus

Faces in the photograph,

trapped where time can never go.

They remember my name,

but I do not know who they are.

Faces in the photograph,

shadows shaped from memory.

The longer I keep watching them,

the less I recognise my face.

Verse 2

At midnight, the picture changed;

a new figure appeared amongst them.

She wore my clothes and had my eyes,

but somehow seemed so much older.

Then beneath the dying light,

I saw an absence where I stood.

I, too, had lived inside that photograph

before the picture had been taken.

Final — whispered

Perhaps it is not they who are trapped...

Perhaps it is us

on the outside.