An incident polarization is often assumed to select one optical skyrmion charge. We show that this static assignment fails for a finite lossy plasmonic lattice, where spatially varying complex phases make the instantaneous field texture evolve over the carrier cycle. Two orthogonal full-wave responses establish a polarization-to-field map, from which circular excitation yields a finite-cell charge $-1.12896\le S_{\mathrm{f}}\left(\varphi \right)\le 1.12896$ with exact half-cycle antisymmetry. For this input, four isolated three-component electric-field zeros occur per half cycle and possess alternating Jacobian orientations $(+1,-1,+1,-1)$. Varying the incident ellipticity displaces these zeros in both real space and carrier phase, producing polarization-controlled zero trajectories. The circular-input events survive grid refinement, while the connected trajectories are stable against the tested continuation and interpolation changes away from the near-linear endpoint. Additional zeros appear near linear polarization. Thus polarization selects a carrier-resolved topology trajectory organized by oriented field-zero events, rather than a single static integer.

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• Topological effects in photonic systems