On the terrace
magnolias in pots
had been writing, when
grandpa was stubbing his
cigarette out on the wooden
planks:
the history of his
lineage in binary codes:
each digit 1
a woman
with a cross
on the forehead:
grandmother,
was spreading
her fingers to the sky
and the laundry:
the red cloth dress
from mum that I put on
today.
I stub out
the cigarette from the wrist
of the pots:
from wild bloody poppies,
I chew them to cover
up the tobacco: from them
swallows will be born.
I think of when
to wet my hands
with the soil
from grandma's pots
and
whether grandpa, when
talking to himself and smoking
that June morning,
could hear the growing of: the grass
the baby in mother's stomach
and the disease.