Gloria Heffernan

The Ghost in the Frame

Little by little
the color has drained
from the photo
I keep on my bookcase. 

Bleached by years in the sun,
your face has faded,
nearly invisible now
under the black hair your mother
brushed into submission
and held in place with two silver barrettes,
parting the waves like Moses
just long enough for the photographer
to catch them smooth and calm
before they sprang back into coils
with a mind of their own. 

The contrast is so stark—
black hair framing ivory skin
that would otherwise blend seamlessly
into the white background—
even your lips drained of the subtle pink
of an unglossed girl. 

The picture sat on your dresser
well into adulthood,
a souvenir kept close at hand
to remind you of a time before
you were so well-versed in sadness. 

I consider moving it to another room
to protect it from the light
in hopes of preserving
the nearly gone hint of pink
tinging the edges
of your twelve-year old cheeks. 

But I leave you where you are,
like a cat curled up
in a patch of sun on the carpet,
instinctively seeking warmth and light.
I will let you fade if that’s what it takes.
You have been too long in the dark.

Gloria Heffernan's first full-length poetry collection, What the Gratitude List Said to the Bucket List, was published in 2019 by New York Quarterly Books. She has also written two chapbooks, Some of Our Parts (Finishing Line Press), and Hail to the Symptom, (Moonstone Press). Her work has appeared in over sixty journals including Chautauqua Literary Journal, Stone Canoe, Columbia Review, and The Healing Muse. Gloria holds an M.A. from New York University and teaches at Le Moyne College and the Downtown Writers Center in Syracuse, New York.