“The photograph of the missing being . . . will touch me like the delayed rays of a star” —Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida There is no body, no way for me to know her face, gazing vacant from the casket where some stranger placed her carefully. Their arms heavy with her, touching her, they held her like a child, held her in a way I never will. I am trying to recall a memory that isn’t mine. Now, she is ash and I’m the aftermath: a sorrow she swaddled in the clutch of her skinny arms for just a moment, then passed along. In the only photograph I have of her, she is eighteen, pregnant with me. Halo of blonde hair teased around her head, gray cat lifted in her clumsy grasp. She doesn’t know that she will die. She is still smiling, eyes wide, mouth faded at the crease, this border I have failed to breach.