Album

My family never owned
a movie camera
so in my scrapbook
we are still
and mainly black and white

The primitive color shots
have faded
leaving only ghosts of
the grandfather
awkwardly holding the baby,
the one-year-old grinning
over a birthday cake

Early Polaroids are even eerier,
nearly blank with slivers of brown
where images used to be
In my mind I see
the toddler taking first steps, 

the mother beaming
on a page that contains nothing but
glossy cards with crinkly edges

And so we are preserved
in grayscale tableau
Figures at a table
or in front of a Christmas tree,
couples and groups
with faces frozen into smiles,
a boy with a bike,
a girl with a doll,
a man in a hat,
a lady in a dress,
colorless people from a
monochrome past
with only an occasional blur
to hint that we were ever alive

Originally publishing in Anthology One.