Return to Light and Dust Poets.
Copyright © 1997 by Rochelle Ratner.
Light and Dust Mobile Anthology of Poetry.
Dad must have put a blue filter
on the camera by mistake.
It's the first time in five years
I've let anyone take my picture
and it's only because Uncle Adolph
has his arm around me.
I don't want to look at this,
want to deny those years
I was almost a vegetable.
This was the worst of it --
I hadn't written for weeks,
gave up most reading,
just sat in my room and cried,
taking stimulants and tranquillizers
till I couldn't see straight.
It was two weeks
after my hunger strike.
I simply didn't want to live
and my body was so thin
the dress they insisted I wear
just hung on me.
This was the world my uncle
was determined to take me away from.
Even if his getting close to me
was only a ploy so he could do
what the family asked of him,
at the time this picture was taken
I didn't know that.
Return to Light and Dust Poets.
Copyright © 1997 by Rochelle Ratner.
Light and Dust Mobile Anthology of Poetry.