Myspace deleted all my photos
but the Internet still has pictures of my butt
Unfortunately, there’s no way to get them back.
In the early 2000s, perhaps before that, I became obsessed with photography. I carried disposables, hand-held cameras. I sported the junky DSLR my dad used to “catch Santa on cam” at my hip with hope of capturing in-between moments. Everywhere I went, I found beauty. So, I made a habit of taking without tainting her.
Facebook was (and is) for our parents, and Myspace was the Twitter of my age. Meticulously, I archived all my precious memories by arc, by age, by person.
Then forgot about it when I went to college in 2010.
In 2019, Myspace suffered a data loss due to a botched server migration, resulting in the disappearance of all user content uploaded before 2016.
In 2022, I logged into Myspace for the first time in almost ten years, and my adolescence was gone.
I never thought I’d see the day where you can still find pictures of my butt on the Internet
but not of the abandoned school bus I found in the woods where I slept when I fought with my mom; the Converse hoodie that hung past my knees; the concrete dam where God reminded me I didn’t need to die to find him; any evidence of what I thought to be “me.”
At least from that time.
A few months ago, I was at a flea market, and I noticed a box of letters for sale. Handwritten, stuffed in a wooden box.
Someone asked to buy just the container.
Do we all become lost love letters when we die?
So, here is a poem about loss, I suppose, of identity. I often wonder if I ever truly had one, but I sometimes find fragments of her glistening in the light when I walk the grounds on summer days.
but I’ll never find her in those old photos again.
It’s day 2 of #Escapril, so I added prompts to this poem! You can find the poets who inspired me below.
MYSPACE DELETED ALL MY PHOTOS
“Nothing you delete from the Internet is truly gone
forever." I sign into Myspace
to find a graveyard. Broken images and empty gray
space stand proud where I used to be. I
ask death what will become of me when they come;
they say, there's only water
and goldfish memories. I
imagine an archived Facebook page decorated in 2D
messages and zero pictures. I
remember a basket brimmed with love letters
for sale at the flea market, and someone asking
for just the box.If you’ve been following along for Escapril
You may have noticed my self-imposed rules for this year! Dubbed my National Poetry Month Nuzlocke, along with writing poems every day using prompts inspired by other poets, I am tracking how many I can use through the month and which poet’s prompts I used the most!
Featured in today’s poem is:
springisbrutal // goldfish memories
Escapril Stats so far
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