Photos revised

There they are, those
smiling, laughing people
in places I have been,
with them. Bodies dried
in boxes or urns of
clumped ashes
in my breathing life.
I wonder if it's hope
or feeling; this imagining
a version of solid,
resurrected by smells and
the sounds of a song.

It's a small triumph when
my eyes automatic
roaming avoids the stop
and think about a glassed
in image. Caught, I follow
to sad and a guilty bargain,
necessary to go on.

Peeling off my clothes at night
I twist, looking/ wishing
for dark stains bleeding into
thin hatch marks,
upraised white scars under
my arms perhaps, to see
this hidden, permanent  grief.