posted February 11, 2025
I do not have eyes the color of my aunt’s or grandmother’s
but when we ate together listening to the pale clouds
we were clearly related canvased together inside the glow
as if of a Matisse painting in my memory I cannot hear
the sound of the leaves or the low distant waves the flap
of the sun-faded awning or how our voices nestled like birds
against each other but I can hear how the light felt
as if my bones were distant church bells as if we three lived
inside the candle my grandmother lit before I was born
in the shadows of one of Notre-Dame’s side chapels
I see her there in the photograph my aunt took
black and white young and newly widowed
her mod trench coat textured like alligator skin
face luminous and pensive not quite like a saint
but perhaps one of the worried lay people at the edges
of a Florentine fresco anxious in their devotion
standing painted between the living congregation
and the mysteries of cities palaces and stables the artist
had not seen but nevertheless imagined vividly colored
as a present-day Easter or Christmas parade
must memory always have the urgency of flame?
now even that vast cathedral has collapsed in on herself
and must be rebuilt stone by stone into her own ghost
but my grandmother—my grandmother is free