Nowhere, Somewhere

by Raine Ferrara

Your great, great uncle Milton- air force jacket rubbed clean

Your great aunt Fanny- she was always so fashionable

Your grandpa- he looked just like you as a baby

They all stand smiling in a rubbed silver vintage frame

In an ink-stained, finger-worn portrait

This is a relic of your past, my dear-memory is all we have left

Few people still live who remember

Their faces, their names, struck from the record like an old shame.

Their silver, their gold, piled on trains headed nowhere.

Their ashes scatter like smoke in the Warsaw wind.

I’m sure there’s a portrait like this somewhere

Somewhere

Somewhere, but not here.

Not in this new land of milk and honey.

Where we can’t keep it, it’s too heavy

Where we can’t afford portraits like this one.

Where we tell our children of men with no faces

And women with no names.

When they take your history, store-bought frames are fine.

Your grandpa Emmanuel-you don’t remember, but he loved you when you were a baby

Your great grandma Channa- her name is different on all the papers

Your great great uncle- who pinched pennies until they bled

Memory is all we have left

It has to rest somewhere

Somewhere.