I loved you first through a photograph, I loved you, I loved you; didn't you know?
I’ve seen her before.
A slight girl clothed in a scarlet dress, holding balloons.
She was printed out on Kodak premium photo paper.
The picture was hanged on a burgundy wall,
Exposed in a genteel frame made of refined gold fabric.
Upper class, I suppose.
Daddy had taken this portrait.
She was nine.
No smile, no tears.
Just that look, that awful look.
“She has been hurt too much,” I thought.
The innocent child was ogling at the camera.
&through the photograph, I felt her broad round eyes on me.
oh!, how unpleasant it was.
She was tearing me apart, in tiny tiny pieces.
It appeared to me as a SOS call, a cry for help.
A few minutes after her father had pressed the button,
She let the balloons fly up to the clouds.
Her hopes were set high.
She pretended the ribbons had slipped from her petite &precious hands;
Her gentle fingers couldn’t hold them tight, she said.
But she did it on purpose, as her mother told me years later.
Her balloons had disappeared.
Reaching the tree tops, they exploded.
She didn’t nod.
Not a single move was executed.
She kept staring in the lens direction.
She didn’t cry.
She made a promise to the god up there, staring at her.
He might have refused her multicoloured &gaudy helium-filled plastic envelops,
But he would listen to her.
“I shall not cry &I refuse to die, you hear me?”
She was nine.
Nine years old &I already loved her.
A slight girl clothed in a scarlet dress, holding balloons.
She was printed out on Kodak premium photo paper.
The picture was hanged on a burgundy wall,
Exposed in a genteel frame made of refined gold fabric.
Upper class, I suppose.
Daddy had taken this portrait.
She was nine.
No smile, no tears.
Just that look, that awful look.
“She has been hurt too much,” I thought.
The innocent child was ogling at the camera.
&through the photograph, I felt her broad round eyes on me.
oh!, how unpleasant it was.
She was tearing me apart, in tiny tiny pieces.
It appeared to me as a SOS call, a cry for help.
A few minutes after her father had pressed the button,
She let the balloons fly up to the clouds.
Her hopes were set high.
She pretended the ribbons had slipped from her petite &precious hands;
Her gentle fingers couldn’t hold them tight, she said.
But she did it on purpose, as her mother told me years later.
Her balloons had disappeared.
Reaching the tree tops, they exploded.
She didn’t nod.
Not a single move was executed.
She kept staring in the lens direction.
She didn’t cry.
She made a promise to the god up there, staring at her.
He might have refused her multicoloured &gaudy helium-filled plastic envelops,
But he would listen to her.
“I shall not cry &I refuse to die, you hear me?”
She was nine.
Nine years old &I already loved her.