I look at the sepia image
and behind it is my grandmother’s secret
optimism, her gratitude delicate as a moth’s wing.
I am as tall as my mother’s dreams as a girl
how she holds her brother’s small hand
and she knows her father loves them both
equally, hugs them like jewels to his chest.
On my best days I am the balloon
of their childhood laughter, the chintz curtains
brushing the windowsill in the photograph,
a summer day in Ohio that death left alone.
Lisa Zimmerman’s poetry collections include How the Garden Looks from Here (Violet Reed Haas Poetry Award winner), The Light at the Edge of Everything (Anhinga Press), and Sainted (Main Street Rag). Her poetry and fiction have appeared in SWWIM Every Day, Cave Wall, Poet Lore, Vox Populi, Cultural Daily, and many other journals. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net, five times for the Pushcart Prize, and included in the 2020 Best Small Fictions anthology. She is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Northern Colorado.