Photography, because it stops the flow of life, is always flirting with death.
—John Berger

A mahogany box perches like a bird in the girl’s lap.
Her hands flutter over the spice-smooth edges.
Her dead mother’s voice trills through the cracks.
A mahogany box perches like a bird in the girl’s lap.
Her mother’s song is copper and sap.
The girl peers into the glass eye to capture her vestiges.
A mahogany box perches like a bird in the girl’s lap.
Her hands flutter over the spice-smooth edges.

Let’s say her mother’s really in there.
Dead at childbirth, she flickers as an afterimage.
Stay, stay. She entreats her daughter to linger.
Let’s say her mother’s really in there,
circling the funneled light of the aperture.
As she does, she alters the image just a smidge.
Let’s say her mother’s really in there.
Dead at childbirth, she flickers as an afterimage.