Memory: Wedding Photo by joseph jamison
A family’s branches grown thicker than roots, seasonally pruned back to perfection. I appear within frame, misplaced, closer to the ground than ever to them, steps away from the aunts, fathers and grandparents posed around the hollow pulpit. Your brother, the chapel’s darkest ram, grazing in graveyards surrounded by decaying memory. Inside the womb, our mother’s blood bonds us. All else is August ice. I remember standing next to him, your father, before the stained glass altar, like a step-father’s blood covered in iconoclast mirrors. Broken images becoming shards, crimson mosaic floor tiles, scattered about our home leaving you without room to play. You hid at their wedding, veiled under white, the last bastion of your innocence. Faces of these family members have faded, in this picture, in my mind. You, my sister, half related by fate, tied to my eternity by grace. Reflection of our mother epitomized, the only lives who mattered remain.
36
