Portrait of a Miscarriage
for Lily 1994
They can never seem to stay in the picture
the way dead people do forever —
Mama at the picnic table, sturdy in her housedress, surrounded by her daughters in their 1950s finest, and me — a serious preschooler, balanced ably on the bench
My childhood friend Leslie — with her Roman nose, that pale white skin, and her prankish smile as she twirls a blade of grass between her slender fingers
Aunt Gert, tall and trim, with her bright blonde-do and her cat rimmed glasses, smiling broadly for the camera
Dear Old Dad, with his birthday crown, raising his glass to the New Year!
My brother Joshua, wearing his Dead Horse Inn tee-shirt with a shit-eating-grin in a cloud of smoke — the doobie just out of the frame
Me pregnant, then not
Unapologetically, our children slip off — moving stealthily from our photographs —
their fine hair electric with each determined step
