Photo Story: Visitation
I recognize her stern chin in flakes of peeling paint, her priggish nose upon water-stained ceilings. And now her profile, a cameo brooch pinned against fractured pavement. Great-grandmother. She’s far less frightening in these ghostly apparitions than she was in life, beckoning me into her arms, an offering of dusty lemon drops like petrified eggs in a nest of withered palms. Ashamed of how I’d pushed her away, recoiled from her dry embrace of cobwebs and corn husks, her perfume of mothballs and urine, I kneel to the ground and kiss her milky cheek. This time I won’t run away.
Photo Credit: Taj Campbell
Beautifully evocative, poetic piece.
Thank you Ken !!!
An extraordinarily evocative piece that creates an entire world of emotion around the image. Brilliant work!
Thank you Don!
loved this, saw the profile instantly when reading your piece and sure didn’t see it when I looked at the picture previously
Thanks, Marianne!
I really like this, well done. Reminds me not so much of my Great-Grandmother, though she was a bit of a site to me as a young boy when she had her teeth out, but of my Great-Aunt Edna who lived with her. Any how, this to me, was very sensitive and deep gut emotional.
Thanks Mueleski!
Thanks Jon!
Excellent selection this month. I love how this story is such an oblique suggestion of the photo. Great work.