Grandma read her doctor's orders aloud over a fresh cigarette. Hummed a nameless hymn of white clouds as she recited the litany of prescribed don't do's:
heavy lighting, bending over, long periods of standing.
This is how you convince your grandchildren to clean your house on the first day of Christmas vacation.
Grandma's hands are too full to hold brooms and dusters anyway. They are too busy balancing prayers born between the flickering knees Of her dust orange lighter. And her patron saint has four legs. All of which can be found tattooed across the chest of a Marlboro carton.
Grandma is a religious woman. So she prays religiously. Says the body is a temple and hers is an old testament book of nicotine sacrifices. A fiery copper skin of crop circle veins. Each wrinkle a story. Each story ending in flames. For 5 decades she has been burning. And I am too old to pretend the ash is invisible. Too young to watch it cuddle the curves of her lips and call it anything but sacrilege.