I can no longer picture my mother,
last memory of a face
erased. I can study her fading photos.
I can bring back the timbre
of her voice, her common sayings

but her expression flickers, quick
sequencing too fast to capture.
How many years has it been?
How many false apparitions?

I once heard a Seer say
ghosts always come back
as their most beautiful selves.
Healed of both wounds and aging.

Retro-fitting their youth with touch-ups
as if mirrors hold forever
a stash of fashions
and every shade of blush.

My grandmother described
her daughter as the prettiest girl
in a time before she ever dreamed of me.

My mother was never the person
in the sickbed. She rejected such a body
decades ago. I press my eye against
a kaleidoscope of old circumstance.

Grief reforms into beautiful beads
the way, at a distance, colors coalesce
into a landscape, a village,
one new yet familiar face.
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