Poetry: Posed-for Nudes

{Photo by Matthew Burton for Scopio}

When I knew I was leaving you, I burned

the evidence: the manila envelope of nudes

you’d taken of me, developed in a makeshift

dark room in our basement, a space

haunted with boxed memories and mold.

What rooms had I posed in?

I cannot recall. In that house, where

I inch-by-inched up shag carpet

in green and gold. Painted the walls

with half-can remnants found in our

falling-down garage—exhuming

beauty from stale tableaus. I now wish

I could see those photos. Look into the eyes

of that girl, with her minute breasts

and velvet, equine hips—to catch sight

of the seduction; what it would teach

of duplicity. Yet that is why they could not

exist—their openness, like fecund seeds,

captured in grainy black-and-white, fodder

for extortion. When I told you I had destroyed

the photos, you cried. My taking away

those images, a more profound grief

than my taking away our daughter. You

mourned the loss of that nude girl with lurid

eyes replaced by the marble-cold gaze of a woman,

learning to pose only for herself.

{Originally published in Yellow Arrow Journal, Summer 2025, ‘Unfurl’}