the forensic artist

Friday, the subway driver tells me a story about a family member who is a forensic artist. This when I ask to sketch him as we drive north to Downsview Station. Our last stop. His door is open. I'm out of models. The train emptied at Wilson Station. I'm sitting at the front of the car and we're heading home. The person he talks about, the family member, drew his children. She aged them. It was many years ago. She ages photos of abducted children for police departments across North America, in pencil. So we can spot them years after they've dissappeared. Today the drawings look exactly like his grown up children. I'm sure it must have been fun for the family, this exercise in time travel. The thought of my children disappearing is numbing.

Have you ever wondered if someone you saw had once been abducted at an early age, had their identity obliterated through attrition and terror. Their lives destroyed, their personhood violated and shattered forever. Some pedestrians and transit riders have that look. Like they've been crushed. My father was such a ghost. Concentration camp vaporized his will. I wish that when I drew people that I could see something about them they've lost, something still hovering nearby, and by drawing it, it returned..