An Old Photograph

I rummage through a box of old photographs. A lady’s image holds my eye: I hold her up to light filtering through a dingy window. The edges are frayed, a scratch cuts across her face, a scar now permanent yet transient, does not disturb the hardness of her stare. Her head, slightly turned towards me, sits on her high-collared neck, her white blouse set off by an oval brooch. Her gaze is fixed on some object outside the confined space that encloses her and the world she once knew. Her hair, set in careful twists, encircles her head like a turban. The high forehead and pronounced cheekbones suggest she might have been a woman of high breeding, wealth and status. The lace ruffles that decorate her blouse conceal an ample bosom. Her lips are full, her eyes bright. Her face still sustains the summer of her age, though soft shadows betray autumn not far off. In this graveyard of old photographs she has outlived her flesh and lost her name to the negligence of time. Her second death is already at work, and with added time she will fade away – for even images like flesh are mortal.