Carnal Fragrance

Photographs

22 Photographs I have only this to go by: What you told me of a boy barely out of his teens returning home from the death camps; his parents, his siblings, his belongings gone, his young history looted. All that remained were old mildewed photographs flung to the farthest corners of your naked rooms like uprooted populations of Jews. When you left forever you took them along; they’d remain what they were, coded bits of lost lives you brought me like a dowry of golden coins. Hard-earned proofs, they froze in place the missing bones of your family. Later, on a friend’s dresser in post-war Germany, you first saw my family, spiffed up, splendid as an artifact. Every picture my father sent my cousin Jack from America contained the myth of truth, a slight tint of distortion, a whiff of prosperity. For years you’ve told everyone how you were smitten by a black and white photograph composed in a studio. I hated the way the high cut of that dress made my breasts seem enormous. I was fifteen. My sister sat next to me, my parents stood, flanking us like righteous pillars. What did you see? Weren’t the banked unsorted ashes still clouding your eyes? How come you chose me? Couldn’t you tell I was myopic, my smile coerced, my hands idle in my lap? Couldn’t you see I was unequipped? Husband: What made you think that raw girl showed promise enough to last you your life? We have since filled albums with travels, filtering out the sun, the compromises. We didn’t know then how it is possible to manipulate an image. I wouldn’t take your picture now, you’ve lost too much flesh. I don’t know how to trick the lens, to bring back again the body I feed and feed praying your muscular frame returns. Cancer bends your bones, turns your eyes inward toward the pain, revives an older pain, the pictures you saved loose in a box you’ve carried over fifty years. Those pictures send the story back to me. 23 They ask me to define who I became, since you are in the dream of medication and still in love. I haven’t stopped to think for months, as if your body has become a rough road that needs a desolated driver’s vigilance. Think of this as one of a series: Snapshots taken from a distant planet, me headed toward a destination I cannot see. ...