The Photographs Belong to the Family

I hold onto everything
Careful not to crush the flowers
Intricacies in the ways I dream
I miss everything
I hold on tighter
Dried petals fall within the weaves
Images beneath remind me

Growing up, my family was very close. My brother was my best friend. Our identities tightly intertwined like a pinky promise. We’d stay at our grandmothers’ on the weekends, playing pretend and building forts in the den. I still hear cicadas in our backyard, but wonder where the lightning bugs went. Maybe they’re rooted in our memories, beneath the grass, where we’d run barefoot. Domesticity brushes against the ever-shifting landscape of memory and identity. Suspended between past and present, old family photographs reveal, in between the black and white, memories we’ve forgotten and ancestral history before us. I photograph my father and his mother, while my mother photographs me. They make up everything I am, from the curls that knot in my hair to the gap in my teeth. As an initial investigation of self, this ongoing series emerges as a family portrait, binding us to one another, offering both certainty and wonder; answering the questions we avoid. These images are not solely mine.

These Photographs Belong to The Family