A Portrait Session

A Portrait Session

Please sit, look straight ahead,
That photo on the wall?  My mother.
Another time
I sat her here— where you are now
Before the world was whole,
She said that my birth was
a black mass spewing heavy light—
She was always very metaphorical.
Do you see her eyes?
Vacant I say,
bereft of her former self
Others see a quiet sadness,
a yearning to breach the sky again
To be the debris she created
Notice how still she sits.
A perfect subject in that way
Hands folded in her lap,
Legs together, slightly turned
away from the body
It does not show on her face but,
she loved this room—
Like you,
she sits, nondescript.
A vision—
On my wall