She is gone now
The sight
of flour on skin,
age spots
form an archipelago
across your arms.
a clutter
of dusty
pictures and
rosaries
under your bed.
Life, you’d sometimes think, hadn’t been that good to me.
Girdles that
squeezed
your fibroid
infested womb—
An old hallowed out
home to five
Barricaded
Against
Life.
You comb
your unruly
hair back;
look uncomfortable.
The look is not you.
I love it when you just
Let it be—
rather than tame it
And look like a scared
Old lady
Instead of the courageous
Heroine that you are.
You still store things
Away
In overflowing drawers
And cupboards
Afraid that one day
You will need
Something
& it will not be there:
What trauma
Gave birth to that?
You say,
I feel your mother
Is doing something
To me—
Like I can’t put my
Fingers on it –
Your hands, exasperated go up in the air
Only to slowly come down
And rest, at your side
Powerless.
We loved each other once.
The nights
I fell asleep
under the
symphony
of your snores:
Uncountable.
Sleeping,
side by side
A woman, and her grandchild.
You say,
Pointing to
A brand new
Press, you say,
Look at that
What my
daughter
Buy for me—
You know what she say?
She say,
when you die
I’m taking it back.
What kind of thing
Is that to say? And you
Schweups at the
callousness of your
Child.
You’ve got:
Two kitchens,
a Toilet
without a door,
social security
checks
deposited
In
Brooklyn.
We walk
down the street
and you smile at
a stranger,
and giggle like
a child...
But wait nah,
you say, stopping,
in a daze. I
thought that was
Nen-nen, but
nen-nen
die long
time now...
What is happening to me, you ask?
& no matter how
hard I try,
I can not answer:
Alzheimers.