AP Photo/Phil Coale

Old Pictures and Black Walls

By Octavia McBride-Ahebee   *1985

Old pictures whisper through cracked

and faded ink,

through haze and lack of photographers’ skill

of the lazy eye you carried,

cold and clear and lonely

-like a child’s abandoned marble upon

a face a blade had no need to tread.

It is the cherry blossom season,

the sun is standing high and hot,

the heat and fragrance rub against the other

trying to fool me into feeling

that the simple swinging scent

of a cherry blossom in flight

wrapped in the warmth of a benign ray

can forgive all that is ugly with its sweet self.

To think that we are same in age

you in death and me in life

with flat stomachs as hard as the head of a hammer,

with corned-covered feet as long and as well traveled

as Broad Street,

with fears as big and heavy as an African elephant

inspires simple yet frenzied fantasies

like me cupping in the palm of my hand

just for the hell of it

your high Cherokee cheekbone

or pressing my parted lips against it

and saying good day Daddy.

But I stand firm and full of fury

like the sun

before this great black wailing wall,

then I see the name that numbs me

-yours-

I walk my knuckle in the

carved crevice of your name

thinking who but a generous mother

of yesteryear

would give such a gift as your name.

I took my thoughts and inhaled them

along with the scent of cherry blossoms and the heat.