The Only Photo by Arvilla Fee

The Only Photo

There’s a picture of me and my mother
I mean, technically, you can’t see me,

although you can see the outline of my form
curled as I was in utero;

but my mother—you can clearly see,
tall, legs like a giraffe, standing on the front porch

near a trellis of plump red roses, dressed in a t-shirt
and shorts; she has a sprinkle of freckles on her nose,

(which I inherited) and long strawberry-blonde hair;
her hand is tented across her forehead, shading

her gray-green eyes from the glare of the sun, and
she’s grinning like a cat who swallowed the canary—

perhaps because my father told one of his pre-dad
jokes—or perhaps because she was still snickering

about putting a plastic snake beside his coffee cup
(a story my dad has told me a thousand times),

or perhaps her sunlit smile was because she knew
I would push my way into the world in just one week;

but no one could know, of course, least of all her,
this would be the only picture I’d ever have of us.

*

Arvilla Fee lives in Dayton, Ohio, teaches English, and is the managing editor for The San Antonio Review. She has had poems, photography, and short stories published in Mudlark, North of Oxford, Drifting Sands Haibun, Triggerfish Critical Review, Cholla Needles, Havik, October Hill Magazine and many other presses. Her poetry books, The Human Side and This is Life can be found on Amazon. To learn more, visit Arvilla’s website.