The children of Mann,

bare bodied and smug,

lie trapped inside a glossy print.

The oldest, a boy

stands in the center,

a sliver of a waistband peaks out.

He’s covered down there,

but that doesn’t really matter

because the photograph

is so focused on his gangly torso

that the echo of a pant is likely to be missed.

The two sisters, bare-chested as well,

lack the pants of the brother.

The blonde girl,

skewed to the very left of the picture

as if she were some kind of after thought,

steals the photo that wanted to forget her.

Unlike her brown haired siblings,

who stand to her right cross armed

and looking straight into the camera,

she tilts her body to the side.

Her arms are bent and glued to her waist,

while she sucks in her tummy and puffs up her chest

The little girl with the yellow hair and heavily lidded eyes.

She’s grown up now.

The long curls are gone.

They’ve been replaced by a shoulder length bob

and severe bangs that cut across her face.

So much of her has changed

That it’s hard to imagine that little girl in the picture used to be her once.

The rounded cheeks, the glowing skin: all gone.

And that heightened sexuality of her youth, that’s gone too.