Missing Family Snapshots
John McKernan
The photo that looks
Like a yellow smiley face
My mother’s egg
Wearing its little beanie
One dot
Of bright red blood
The image of my father’s sperm
That one without name or mittens
An earlier version of me
My thin slithery motions
My skull lurking both ways
Even when there is no street to cross
The one with that famous collision
When the language inside my skull
Was poured into an alphabet of silence
Which will never stop growing
Until it swallows the entire universe
Whose snapshot is still missing