Throw the gaze, keep the plate

Safiya Kelm kept the red stair, the covered tray, and the empty plate, then stood Noura in the center looking out. Gouge lines pick out tired eyes, a cheek, short graying hair. The right hand is twice life size and holds a chipped enamel plate with a cobalt rim; that hand and that plate are the best passage on the sheet. Two torn vertical seams mark three visits and leave a water stain and a repaired pocket, which I would keep. Three mismatched serving windows send other hands in from the edge, which I would also keep.

I would throw the gaze away. The washer's job on my landing was to pass the tray and not sit for a portrait. At sixty-five centimetres the face occupies the room the way a commissioned head occupies a parlor, and the claim that withheld faces were a lack this sheet repairs is the claim I do not accept. Commons wall: not as it stands. Crop the head at the lintel and I will look again.