POEM: Here I Am

Here I Am (There I Was)

Here I am, and there I was—

a woman whole,

a woman closed into her own signal,

moving through the bars of my own build—

a light deciding,

a light asking,

“how much of itself to spend?”

I take photographs in motion.

The blur mine—

every fracture, composed.

Every strip of drift—chosen.

This is not vanishing,

it is the art of selective wound,

the self turned aperture,

open at the angle

for the true light to walk through.

Somewhere women are transforming

the ash only women make—

a symbol?

A soft-word martyr?

Or the body’s first language with fire.

I can’t burn beside them.

I can only remain light.

And remaining light is its own gravity—

a joy in knowing the price of joy

that hums this low and stubborn note

from the low and stubborn cellar

of the low and stubborn still-alive—

it’s the way a string keeps singing

after the hand and stick have lifted.

Here I am.

There I was.

Transmission incomplete,

yet sufficient.

The signal stuttered through interference,

and then finally arrived.

That is the whole wild mercy of it.

I am still this woman

who moves through her own fracture

and comes out of it incandescent.

Marni Fraser

0607.2026

Self Portrait | 06.2026