THE TWENTY SECOND YEAR

THE DEAD GRANDMOTHER POEM

my grandmother laying down on the gray couch, my grandmother 
watching the news religiously, my grandmother with and without her glasses,
my grandmother saying Tut's Garage whenever she answered the phone,
my grandmother at the beach, my grandmother at the park,
my grandmother in the kitchen, my grandmother waiting for me in the car, 
my grandmother giving herself a new name—Penelope Pitstop—
my grandmother washing her hair in the sink, my grandmother crying 
in a hospital bed, my grandmother saying Sorry baby, my grandmother 
who said she would teach me how to sew and never did, my grandmother 
who kept all my baby teeth in a little blue bag, my grandmother smiling at me, 
that little gap in her teeth, my grandmother with those eyes ringed with blue, 
my grandmother with two braids, my grandmother with an afro, my grandmother 
with twists, my grandmother in a red dress, my grandmother in a nightgown, 
my grandmother in a wheelchair, my grandmother saying I love you for the last time, 
my grandmother calling me by the wrong name again, my grandmother's voice 
in the morning, my grandmother saying my name the way she says it, 
my grandmother who still called her father Daddy at 64 years old, my grandmother
who I imagine is somewhere singing, my grandmother who I imagine 
as a child again, sitting on her daddy's lap, my grandmother reunited at last
with her gone father, her gone mother, her gone sisters, my grandmother laughing,
my grandmother praying, my grandmother who I called as she laid there, shaking, 
her son holding her like a child, my grandmother who I called,
and I could have sworn she tried to look at me, my grandmother
who told me Sorry baby when she called me downstairs and I stood there
for 30 minutes while she laid there on her side, trying to find the strength 
to move one of her legs—her legs inflated once again like two horrible balloons—
so I could lift her up, my grandmother who told me Sorry baby
and I whispered It's okay instead of I love you and left her in her bed downstairs,
my grandmother who died on a warm March day in the afternoon,
my grandmother who died two days before her 65th birthday, my grandmother
gone and yet something terrible still tugging at my wrist, asking me to live.