Folded Corners

The photo slips between my fingers—

its edges worn thin like old regrets,

corners curling like whispered lies.

He stands there, a boy

caught in the half-light of another time,

smiling with a face I don’t know,

yet ache in the spaces between.

My mother’s voice cracks:

"He wants to meet you."

Words heavier than the paper they float on.

I trace the crease, imagine a split

running through blood and silence,

a half-sibling, half a sentence,

half a life I wasn’t meant to claim.

The picture folds again, less a map

than a riddle—how to piece a whole

from fragments that never aligned?