Remember how it used to be.

You’d load a camera. Take pictures.
Rush to the darkroom. Feel
into the lightproof womb,
slide the film into the developer,
stop solution, wash, hang to dry
till it was ready for the light.
Those tiny squares of images
black as white, white as black.

You never printed them.

I spent thirty years in the dark
trying to understand
until the scar of your back
faded into the dense evening.