Ray Ball

Granny, in a box I found an old photograph of you 
taken nearly ninety years ago. In it, you and a friend

pose on the edge of a crescent moon. You wear dresses, 
stockings, and smiles. The yellows of passing seasons mute

the dark and light. The exact shades of the skirts and heels 
you cast off long ago are impossible to ascertain. Vintage 

creates glamour. It is simpler to romanticize this youthful 
version of you. Your short, once-auburn hair rendered 

dark in monochrome. Yes, it is much simpler not to question family 
legends. I never did as a child. I accepted the tales told to me 

as half-gospel, half-ripened plums, but now I want to know, 
daughter of the moon, about the friend you curve your body

toward. Tell me the truth about (the fiddleback myth of) 
your own granny’s passing (and the ease of creating 

a bloodline without the real consequences of racism). 
This photograph is not the first inventor of whiteness. 

Or of what appears dark. My hair formed an obsidian slab 
until I was twelve, and all through my childhood, my skin 

drank the summer sun. I claimed a sliver of heritage that wasn’t 
mine. Now no radiometric dating, no DNA test, but my mother’s 

genealogical research and my lived experiences make me 
a white woman. So I whisper to your faded remnant. 

I demand an explanation from the waning satellite suspended 
over the woods. Although I realize that’s how the sky 

often appeared – still appears in Oklahoma – I long for
a nighttime confession. How could you believe you were

descended from a Cherokee princess when you always 
refused to believe that a man ever walked on the moon?