Photograph of her Great Grandfather
The camera flash is reflected in his eyes
like sunlight catching icebergs in a gunmetal sea,
and his gaze defies portrait convention
by refusing to meet her own, regardless
of where in the room she chooses to stand.
Purple lips and thick black sweater
are frozen in coloured chemicals,
presiding over the head of the head of the table,
hung proudly in the space above the fireplace.
Young irises the colour of antifreeze
study the cold man, who, snapped and shuttered
away from a timely death, simply
sits instead of dies and guards the
chimney flue, warming his back with rising ash.
She thinks he looks too cold
to be comfortable, and stokes
the hearth in an attempt to bring red back into
the greyscale of his face,
to melt the ice of his polaroid permafrost.
She thought she could help; she just wanted him
to be warm again. Perhaps he was,
perhaps he felt some small affection stir
for her in his thawing heart, before he fell,
dislodged from his perch on the wall,
to become angry black smoke in the grate,
his sallow skin bubbling, the edges blackening
and curling up, a flower in mourning.
Soon enough, even her memory
of his face melted, like snow in Spring.
The camera flash is reflected in his eyes
like sunlight catching icebergs in a gunmetal sea,
and his gaze defies portrait convention
by refusing to meet her own, regardless
of where in the room she chooses to stand.
Purple lips and thick black sweater
are frozen in coloured chemicals,
presiding over the head of the head of the table,
hung proudly in the space above the fireplace.
Young irises the colour of antifreeze
study the cold man, who, snapped and shuttered
away from a timely death, simply
sits instead of dies and guards the
chimney flue, warming his back with rising ash.
She thinks he looks too cold
to be comfortable, and stokes
the hearth in an attempt to bring red back into
the greyscale of his face,
to melt the ice of his polaroid permafrost.
She thought she could help; she just wanted him
to be warm again. Perhaps he was,
perhaps he felt some small affection stir
for her in his thawing heart, before he fell,
dislodged from his perch on the wall,
to become angry black smoke in the grate,
his sallow skin bubbling, the edges blackening
and curling up, a flower in mourning.
Soon enough, even her memory
of his face melted, like snow in Spring.