Evidence

She opened the box

and the room
filled with faces.

Black and white,
their edges softened
by years of being held.

A little girl
who would become her mother.

A young man
before time
had written itself
across his face.

Brothers.

Friends.

A wedding.
A picnic.
A street no one remembers
except those
who walked it.

She spoke their names
one by one,

and for a while
they lived again.

Then,

without warning,

grief took the chair
beside me.

Not because
of what I saw,

but because
I had nothing
to place beside them.

No envelope
tucked into a drawer.

No fading prints.

No child
looking back at me.

No evidence
that I had once belonged
to anyone.

As if my life
had happened
without a witness.