Margaret Anne Kitts in 1884
You peer out ruefully,
head on the shy side, and leaning
in from the fringe,
hands hidden
behind in-laws, although
your shoulder tilts
almost unwillingly
towards your husband.
Think you're called Annie,
can't be sure.
Is the bulge a bustle, or,
as I suspect,
your unborn daughter,
in whose birth's impossible pain
you'll die within months?
I catch myself in your glass,
draw my lame eye
straight to your own.
Feel lonely, as you look,
and wonder if I've
painted my pain on to yours,
if I've made of you
my palimpsest, have scrawled
my life over yours.
Perhaps, in a minute, you'll
send words hurdling,
will jig your hidden feet,
spin kisses like tops
at your husband. Be bridal.
It's two seasons before death,
you must be breathless.
And he'll go, too,
he'll die in a fug of opium,
somewhere in Shanghai.
And the child will live,
she'll teach, sketch, preach
until eighty-three.
But you'll stay pasted
to this page, rooted.
Mentioned in annotations, and never
conscious of my
flinching gaze.