Someone Old
by KateLin Carsrud
Someone old holding
someone new, pressed
cheek to cheek.
This photograph is
one of the few
I have of you.
You’re camera shy
but not because you’re shy.
This picture I have
was our third try.
You didn’t like
the first two--
because of your eye,
a little swollen,
all gray,
glazed over,
noticeably blind.
You look happy.
I like to think of you
like that--
happy. Probably because
I’ve seen you cry
so often. So many times--
at least once every day
for every year
I’ve been alive.
Behind you—Christmas lights,
round old-fashioned bulbs.
Your gift that year was
a family tree:
You and dad,
sister and husband,
me and husband,
sister,
brother.
Dad cried when
you opened it.
You cannot hang
that oak board
in the house anymore
someone new, pressed
cheek to cheek.
This photograph is
one of the few
I have of you.
You’re camera shy
but not because you’re shy.
This picture I have
was our third try.
You didn’t like
the first two--
because of your eye,
a little swollen,
all gray,
glazed over,
noticeably blind.
You look happy.
I like to think of you
like that--
happy. Probably because
I’ve seen you cry
so often. So many times--
at least once every day
for every year
I’ve been alive.
Behind you—Christmas lights,
round old-fashioned bulbs.
Your gift that year was
a family tree:
You and dad,
sister and husband,
me and husband,
sister,
brother.
Dad cried when
you opened it.
You cannot hang
that oak board
in the house anymore
KateLin Carsrud is a graduate student in the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her work has appeared in Baltimore-based literary magazine JMMW, Medicine and Meaning, and Equinox, where she was awarded the 2019 David Jauss Prize for Fiction. Her poetry has appeared in The Closed Eye Open, and she has forthcoming poetry in Nine Cloud Journal. Lastly, she has art published in the sex-positive magazine Throats to the Sky.