Girl Carrying a Suitcase

New York, ca. 1960, by Garry Winogrand

Younger in the photo   than my daughter is now—     eighteen or nineteen,

the same age as my wife   when I first met her—     she would now be not quite

old enough to be my mother,   more like an older cousin     I saw only in summer

and would steal glimpses of   or find ways to be near . . .     just as I kept circling back

to this girl’s photograph   at the exhibition     to study again

the way her body bends   slightly to the right     to offset the weight

of her fabric-covered suitcase   against the lighter raffia bag     in her other hand;

the tapered cut   of her sleeveless dress     printed with black-eyed Susans

(one centered over a breast);   and the way her silver bracelets     gather at her wrists

below the almost-dimples   on the inside of her elbows,     the photo’s shadowed foci.

And since bringing home   the postcard I bought     at the museum shop,

I’ve been searching her image   like a figure recovered      from my own past,

someone I almost recognize,   though her head      is veiled in glare,

and her hair coming loose   from her braids conceals   the right side of her face.

She gazes downward,   toward the sidewalk she      has just stepped onto

from the busy crosswalk,   unhurried and alone     amid the crowd

of the city she is either   leaving or returning to      but not arriving in

for the first time    (she is too unguarded),      lost in herself,

thinking perhaps of whoever   she has just been staying with      or is about to visit,

someone who—whether cousin,   friend, parent, or lover—      must surely adore her.

If only I could find her   and show her this photograph      which, almost certainly,

she has never seen,   since it was printed for the first time      only recently,

decades after   the photographer’s death . . .      or at least send her this postcard

I’ve been keeping on my desk   these last few weeks,      giving this stolen

glimpse of her past   back to her, so she too      might be taken

by this young woman   who was once herself,      like someone held dear

who left long ago   then one late afternoon      shows up at the door.