Grayscale

You may have her printed black and whites

The ones no one really looked at

Except you and me

Or her original Nabisco storage tin

For saltines

Perfectly paired with fever, dipped

In sick day bone broth.

But the memory is mine

Of that pale, blue lid

Corner rusted and worked over

Shuffling open, cellophane peeled back

stacked high and slathered with honey butter,

Eagerly awaiting to be eaten.

And her face, you cannot commandeer

A possession intended just for me

Watching, the chronological

Secret society of line and luminance

The genetic prequel

Before she was called “Grandmother.”

The gestation of those jowls

Begins from a mouth corner dimple

Bride of Frankenstein skunk stripes

How they streak together, one after another

until all is white and chiaroscuro

Against hyperpigmented, melasmic skin

The color wheel of heredity bleeding out

Me, monochromatic.

You, complementary at best.

Those neighborhood colors, too,

hiding just underneath

The grayscale of those photographs

Private games of eye spy

Between us two

Something gold, something brown

Her eyes and mine

My absolute favorite hue.

You measure the tonal values, where the black gradates to gray.

As I live, the reincarnate,

In color.