David says I should write a happy poem.
Grandma,
so many years have passed!
How you have shrunk
quick like the purloined bar
of hotel soap mother places out on a dish for guests,
after a simple day’s worth of hand washing.
All the fat from you drained,
just like the white sliver in the bathroom
no one will now use.
This is how I imagine your flesh
beneath the sagging elephant skin
you now bear.
Too old it says to catch up to a
too quick changing body.
Your skin doesn’t forget who you once were.
Strange to see you so wrinkled as your brain becomes less so.
The doctors ironing out your condition to us;
I can see your tablet quietly erasing itself.
We take you home like a pet
rediscovered at a shelter.
Had we really misplaced you?
Father doesn’t realize your
change and still thinks you a cat.
The folds of your skin retain weeks of sweat
And we will have to spray you down to get rid of the stink.
As father tears the clothing from you
I see in your eyes that we have become wolves.
I am told that you are my responsibility now,
Grandma, and I will tend to you.
The first time I give you a bath
you insist that you can do it yourself.
I hear you call me, and run to you
but become deaf when I see
the scars, so clean on your chest.
You do not seem to be aware
of the parts of you that are missing.
Perhaps because of this, I mishear you,
when you appear to recognize me
and call me ‘maid.’
Days later I find you shivering
half naked in the bathroom
hiding shit filled underpants behind the toilet.
You are frantically scrubbing a pair in the sink
trying to figure out where are all these piles of
shit covered underwear are coming from.
(Hording themselves so sneakily in your closet
you mutter)
At night, unable to sleep,
you get up and check lock,
check lock,
check lock,
because this is a strange place
filled with so many robber ghost aliens
at the door ready to steal---
all the material things that you hold so close
and important to you.
so many years have passed!
How you have shrunk
quick like the purloined bar
of hotel soap mother places out on a dish for guests,
after a simple day’s worth of hand washing.
All the fat from you drained,
just like the white sliver in the bathroom
no one will now use.
This is how I imagine your flesh
beneath the sagging elephant skin
you now bear.
Too old it says to catch up to a
too quick changing body.
Your skin doesn’t forget who you once were.
Strange to see you so wrinkled as your brain becomes less so.
The doctors ironing out your condition to us;
I can see your tablet quietly erasing itself.
We take you home like a pet
rediscovered at a shelter.
Had we really misplaced you?
Father doesn’t realize your
change and still thinks you a cat.
The folds of your skin retain weeks of sweat
And we will have to spray you down to get rid of the stink.
As father tears the clothing from you
I see in your eyes that we have become wolves.
I am told that you are my responsibility now,
Grandma, and I will tend to you.
The first time I give you a bath
you insist that you can do it yourself.
I hear you call me, and run to you
but become deaf when I see
the scars, so clean on your chest.
You do not seem to be aware
of the parts of you that are missing.
Perhaps because of this, I mishear you,
when you appear to recognize me
and call me ‘maid.’
Days later I find you shivering
half naked in the bathroom
hiding shit filled underpants behind the toilet.
You are frantically scrubbing a pair in the sink
trying to figure out where are all these piles of
shit covered underwear are coming from.
(Hording themselves so sneakily in your closet
you mutter)
At night, unable to sleep,
you get up and check lock,
check lock,
check lock,
because this is a strange place
filled with so many robber ghost aliens
at the door ready to steal---
all the material things that you hold so close
and important to you.