family of stickers 

my great aunts would get stickers 
in the mail & save them for me. 
like having two grandmothers.
their cloud-like hair. 
their pink painted mouths.
stickers with portraits of
carnations. red. yellow. orange. roses. 
rippling american flags.
running horses. a miniature square
of beach 
complete with three shells &
a starfish. stars. trees.
what word can i use
to explain an image so common 
that it means nothing & everything.
that's what these stickers were.
an image repeated 
five to a row.
each time we'd visit they'd present
the stickers to me. sheet after sheet.
some wearing shiny silver edges.
they'd hold the sheet up 
to the dim light of the dining room. 
our thin pink reflections 
in boarders.
red table clothe. portraits
of relatives on every end table
some of them framed in silver.
the big bay window showering
the stickers with light. 
i wanted to make family of stickers.
i would go alone with my stickers  
in their big house. alone to peel
the first one off a sheet.
how carefully i'd work
peeling corner up first--
watching the slice of image 
pull free from its adhesive surface 
before planting it on a patch
of my own skin. maybe the back
of my hand. sometimes looking
in the bathroom mirror i would
place one on each cheek
staring at myself a moment or two
before removing the stickers.
the sticking to skin & the tug
of hair as each was removed.
what did these fragments 
mean to me? were they part of
my body? did i want
to crawl into one of their
clear scenes. an urge for simplicity.
to be contained in just one chamber.
in the rec room we would all sit
& listen to the aunts talk.
their words rippled over me
as if gazed into the sheets
of stickers. i should have offered 
it to them as well. i should have
put stickers over their eyes 
& on their cheeks. they also 
probably dreamed of those landscapes.
what stories they told?
those are gone now but i could
still take their bodies
& press them into a sheet
of stickers. repeat my great aunts 
across a sheet. their faces.
their hands. their mouths.
their bodies as flowers.
maybe a pink rose or even 
a field of lavender. 
running horses. 
a rippling flag.