Developing Prints, Age Thirteen

Ruth, your blonde hair dissolves in shadow beyond 
your birthday candles, an orange ghost that floats 
under the safelight in vinegar-smelling hypo.

I listen for my father’s step on the basement stairs, 
pull the negatives’ scroll from the enlarger.  He’ll say 
the print is underexposed, poorly framed, crush it 

between aluminum tongs, toss it sopping in the trash. 
A photographer is only as strong as her weakest work, 
he’ll say.  Then I’ll remember your party, Ruth, how Jane 

ran her finger back and forth through the flame 
to show us it wouldn’t hurt, how I leaned my shoulders
on your cool dining room wall and composed everything 

in the viewfinder.  How we all slept over, talking nonstop
about sex until dawn showed your brother’s ruined bike
abandoned in the yard. And how, just before my mother 

came to get me, I knew I could never risk love.  Ruth,
when I am twenty-two, I will meet you on a commuter train 
and you will be married to a bullfighter and tell me 

that giving birth feels like having your heart pulled out.
And your scientist father, who grilled us all hamburgers that night--
after he dies, the police will find he kept in your basement
chemicals so explosive they’ll have to evacuate the whole block.