Photoshopping my sister's mugshot
i crop out the trailer and the splintered remains of the front door
i crop out your name all over the news
i crop out the sawed-off shotgun they found hidden in the yard
i crop out the blood vacant faces of every soul who was sold to
i crop out their families hunted hearts
i rotate the image
'til you are upside down hanging from the monkey bars
hollering my name Andrea look what i can do
i zoom in so there is no lighter beneath the spoon
just ice cream dripping from your lips
and me trying to teach you how to blow out the candles
the day you turned two years old
your cheeks like pink balloons giggling away gravity
i give more detail to the background
i pose you beside our bloodline
our grandfather thrown his liver through the kitchen window
our grandmother on her knees sweeping up the glass
I zoom in to the pieces she didn't find
I find them in the sole of your shoes
on your worst day of junior high
there is a thin line between skewing the truth and giving a panoramic view
I don't know if I am widening the lens
or if I am just making an excuse
when I say you were a kid the first time you used
when I say you wanted blue hair and a boyfriend
not a conscience that wouldn't have a good vein left
not an abscess and the arm
you would one day not hold your family with
not me falling off the wagon of my unforgiveness
running to the police station
begging them to replace your photo with the negative
the dark side in full light
the filth hungry scream in your body every time you tried to get clean
the clinic that told our mother you would die
if she didn't send you back to the streets
to find the poison to kill the bugs
how I'd count your legs when you walked into a room
how I still do
but how that isn't the right exposure
because you were also the kindest person I ever knew
and that in itself has been its own dark room
considering the ugliness is to scale
considering our family tree
and other isn't a person who loves you
who isn't dead on the branch
how loving you less might have been a sweetest gift
I could have given my own life
but how that sweetness would have rotted God's teeth
when every Christmas morning
you woke me at four am
more excited for me to open my stocking
than you were to open yours
how do I say that to a judge and not sound insane
how do I say the truth isn't the right filter
the truth knows nothing of who you almost were
but I do
I do
I just click a button
I undo one tiny thing
and there you are