Past the eternal photograph

Nicholas
by Mairi MacInnes

Dead Nicholas
smiles out of the photograph
on the stairs of the borrowed house
and I recall that when he was
a boy, put to bed, he'd smiling
stealthily reappear
his steps and voice
are now a man's default

though too he's ever-present,
a dislodged marble
dropping daily from stair to stair
past the eternal photograph
of himself once smiling
out through the front door
and into the street

a wrecker's ball
hauled back on its chain
and swung against the building
to the windows pop
in the frames collapse
and remaining walls let go