256fps

You are somewhere between the slides
dropping one after another out of a Polaroid
into a shoebox, I
stack them,
flip through them for memory
with my thumb and my finger, as fast as I can.

I can’t see fast enough to pull you out of them,
overexposed you catch the corner of
the frame.
One picture that doesn’t fit.

Waiting for the search party,
in stacks of photographs
there’s a needle hiding.