The Death of Cleopatra was shipped to a gallery
in Chicago, then put in storage. The colossal sculpture
was later brought to a deserted field, a cemetery
for racehorses, then a warehouse. For almost a century,
much of the sculptor’s story was hidden, too,
dazzling, disappearing, and then showing up again,
like waves that froth, rise, then curl under the sea’s surface.
After Edmonia Lewis left Philadelphia, she traveled,
then returned to Europe. Little else is known.
Did she ever go back to the forest, looking for her aunts?
Did she find love with a woman or man that lasted beyond
moments or days? We don’t know if anyone ever brushed
marble dust from her hair or if she ever nestled her chin
in the neck of a friend’s baby. No one knows what
she regretted, longed for, or truly made her proud.
Some of her sculptures are now in museums,
but much remains missing. Conversations fade
even as they’re spoken. Still, how does something many
have seen vanish from sight? How does history
lose track of a woman famous in her day?
People forget, move, quarrel, break things, and die.
Pianos were sold, fireplaces blocked, mantelpieces taken down,
and houses destroyed to make way for new buildings.
Historians still search for a gravestone. Will someone ever look
through an attic and find a stone face they don’t recognize
crammed among chipped teacups, boxes of skates,
mice-gnawed candles, emptied perfume bottles,
a pair of crutches covered with cobwebs, bent spectacles,
broken clocks, albums of pressed flowers, and spools
without thread someone couldn’t bear to toss out?
Memory doesn’t follow a straight line.
The past changes every time we look back.
What can be guessed from the shape of stone,
and peering through the open spaces in questions,
has to be enough. History is not only caught
in vaults or glass cases, but is what’s shoved aside
or deliberately left out: The letter left within the pages
of a book, what was whispered over cake or soup.
What’s discarded turns to treasure.
What we have is enough, or almost.
Questions. Beauty. Love.