Going Through Old Pictures

by Melissa Poulin

past midnight we dimple slowly

back to youth in their rooms our children

sleep but on screen they don't yet exist

just pixel and code inside moving backward

in time I begin to believe my young

body disbelieve the me in the mirror

old woman covering me

gold temple grown over with vines

or my body's a boat taking me

surely to grave funny we don't think

it will happen to us the gentle ancient soul

over-confident in its seamless code

suddenly my son cries out

from a dream of himself calling

from his small boy bed for me

with newly cut hair he comes running

running chubby hands over exposed neck uneasy

unsure if he is still himself

all night he shifts between us there there I say

patting his back you are still

the same boy

---

Melissa Poulin is a writer, wife, and mother in Portland, Oregon. Her poems and essays appear in Ruminate Magazine, Relief Journal, Water~Stone Review, Hip Mama, Coffee + Crumbs, Empty House Press, Entropy Magazine, and Writers Resist, among many other publications. She is the author of a chapbook, Rupture, Light (Finishing Line Press, 2018), and co-editor of the 2014 anthology Winged: New Writing on Bees, proceeds of which benefitted pollinator conservation efforts. You can find more of her work at melissareeserpoulin.com