Shoeboxes of love stacked like brickwork

In one,
I found my great-great-great Grandfather stumbling over a deck at the worst time, 400 cavalry horses, carving hooves into wood, hacking out over the edge of the ship like a swarm of rats hatching through the waves.

In another,
ribboned in, I met the man who nearly stopped me existing. Who would have had my Grandmother menstruating through it all, her tongue rolling into French words, happier than she was and less beaten.
I wouldn’t have sat here; she wouldn’t have sat there folding shut, gathering us all together in a nod that justified everything: a lifetime of rattling teacups, the thud as she was shoved from a moving train, the man who was in us all; but none of the photographs.