after Providence, Rhode Island, 1976,
Francesca Woodman, photograph, 1976
Am I in the picture? Am I getting in or out of it? I could be a ghost, an
animal or a dead body, not just this girl standing in the corner . . . ?
—Francesca Woodman
My shadow spills out of me—
hourly, sometimes, staining
the light, asking it, with its
doll arms and missing leg,
How did you grow?
It was my negative. I watch it, nude,
drawing a darkness around it, a
cloak against little feet in Mary Janes,
rounded calves, this woman’s body
eating space.
It cannot carry me. It is only a map,
a future.
