between echoes of gray exhibit wall

and hardwood gallery floor we meet

in the museum of the University

where I have spent the last two years

learning terms like a priori and ontological

metalepsis, trying to prove them useful

to my life. The room is empty. Your gaze

touches mine. This painting portrays Polly

Bemis, the most renowned Chinese woman

in the West...I have never heard your name,

never learned your story. The artist

has reimagined your 1894 wedding

photograph. Your face level with mine,

the more I look the more I

see you in my mother’s old shoebox—

in the photo of her grandmother, in the photo

of my grandmother—the portrait she needed

taken for immigration papers. Theory dissolves

here, through this canvas I take the myth

of you within myself—make mine what is

not, what is—