by Shara McCallum
for Hannah Lowe
Dear Nelsa, please forgive my familiarity, but I don’t know how else to begin. In the way of all photographs, you’ve become time’s signature. Here, it is always 1955, and you, stalled in your 24th year. Sent this photograph by your niece, I have to confess I feel myself a trespasser. You are of my grandmother’s generation of Caribbean women. This portrait you sat for, I know to be an older convention. Though I am sure you once (always?) believed in the dream of love, parcelled in the dedication you’ve scrawled to your beloved on the back. In your placid gaze, I see a willed-perhaps contentment (but what of the washing left on the line, your hope to return in time to gather it before rain set in?). In your half-smile, your eyes pointedly focussed away from the camera, you are the image of propriety (what of the dance floors, verandahs, and bedrooms of your life?). Scanning downward, what catches my eye are the details of the jacket you selected. Its collar, the slant of the lapel, and buttons all unmistakably conjure China. So, when now I return to your face—as with my own, your niece’s, so many of the women of our country—I see again: the body is evidentiary, sedimenting its history.
Poem copyright 2025 by Shara McCallum. All rights reserved.
See “Passage” from Shara McCallum, also debuted on The Fight & The Fiddle.
Read more in this issue: Interview | Critical Essay | Writing Prompt