melange raze all but two of the original photos are lost. what i'm left with is a crude collage you crafted in three parts with a xerox machine you must have paid to use. the first page is flooded with the faces of every person who worked in your father's fabric store. i count thirty-nine of them. your mouth is smiling. your eyes are gone to some dead place. your wife sits three rows ahead of you. the man who gave you life and left you to be raised by maids while he earned his fortune is on the other side of the room. his own wife stands at his side. in the bottom right corner is a smaller image of a skeleton crew shot on the sidewalk. a floating window. you're there too, but the grain makes you a ghost. there are four pictures on the second page. a family photo taken in 1959. my father wears a striped shirt. your hand is on his brother's back. there's brian breathing into a bugle. below him, your father again. riding a horse he probably owned. daring the camera to capture his swagger. and my parents celebrating christmas years before i was born. i swear i have this in colour somewhere. five shots on the last page. you, your father, and brian standing outside an optical store. jennie with the woman who bought her the drink you drove her to. her husband beside her. that can't be you at the end of the line, two bodies away from your bride. i don't know who that is. my favourite picture of her is here too. there's a grinning question mark of a woman with pearls around her neck, about to bite into something that resembles a small planet. we end with you alone. walking into traffic. a bent cigarette between your fingers. a dark suit wrapped around your frame. you're younger and more beautiful than i ever believed you could have been. you've scrawled some words in the sky, dipping into the language of your motherland. they seem to say: i see the vizier's place. we eat with glory. we'll be in touch. 230427 what's it to you? who go blather from