Here I am again,
propped up for the photographer’s pleasure.
It’s easy to see how photographs make memories.
Will future relations remember me simply as the gaunt, unsmiling soul
peering out to them?
Stripped of my homeland and family just
to come to the land of promise.
America.
I believe my soul reaches out farther than the glass
and gently taps the shoulder of the viewer,
connecting us.
I may be gone when
my great-granddaughter writes a poem to preserve my memory.
I know that I will be proud.
Share it. Share it with others.
Mia Nadira Carter studied creative writing at last year’s Teen Lit Magazine at the Musehouse Literary Arts Center in Germantown. Her poem The Night Sky was published in the Winter issue of Philadelphia Stories, Junior.