Haunting

You are right to haunt us.
Your journey, captured
with collodion fragility,
ended too suddenly.

Ritual and repetition,
in tinplate, your eyes
spirited a diaspora
to challenge our stories -

stories we repeat:
about history and power
and man and woman
and dark and light.

Cover your eyes.
You don’t want to see
how we responded
to your beautiful skin.