MUSINGS #68 - Negative Space appearing in Coal City Review 40:2018

Negative Space

making a photo album of my mother

None of her dancing mother

who abandoned her –

threatened by

her budding beauty.

None of her first love

shot down in the war –

photos burned by a husband

haunted by his fiery ghost.

None of her first child

older than the age of two –

born blind

and dying of cancer.

None of her as grieving

widow. His absence no

mere gap in chronology –

but a chasm.

None of her, lonely and hurt

by our tug at the strings

she wound

to hold us close.

None of her

these last eighteen years –

no way to capture

the image of a ghost.