vi. my inheritance
genes are funny things.
express themselves in different
and delayed ways
e.g. for my mum,
my oldest younger brother
(despite the autism and epilepsy and
lack of blindness)
is a carbon copy of her father
according to nature and my uncle nonso:
this is true of me and my paternal grandmother;
(though i cannot recall the outlines of her face)
the dying girl; the dead woman
are said to be one in the same,
spitting images of the other
both with our predisposition for strokes:
mine with my almost stroke
before the surgery;
my grandma with the actual stroke
she had several days
before her death
and our naivety;
mine with my belief in people,
and fate
and hopeless romanticism
her with her love of walks
and how she always fell for the false promise of the scottish sun
only to run back inside every single time, surprised by the cold -
and even our 'moles':
hers, i still recall, somewhere on her upper back;
mine a newly formed mass at my side, a result of wound that never quite healed.
YOU ARE READING
that corpse you planted last year in your garden, has it begun to sprout?
PoetryA poem about the loss of my grandmother, in seven parts.
