It lives against my throat like a shard of glass,
Held in your hand always.
No
I don’t think that you’re a monster.
It was not always your hand cutting my breathing short,
But you look like him with the lights off.
There is never a good time to talk about the monsters that still hang Over my shoulder,
But they’re smaller now.
They don’t bite anymore.

And still my aunt speaks to her of roses and the weather
Of “Can’t you believe it, it’s October and it’s so hot! Look, it’s good for the roses, see how big they’ve gotten.”
And my mother holds her hand,
Which holds inside of it ninety-two years,
Fifty of which she has given to my mother,
The last of which she is spending in this fishbowl world where her Hands
hold on to loose thread, grab at hair falling in her face, adjust the Glasses sliding down her nose
Always moving so slow, like through water.
My mom reaches to move the hair from my grandmother’s face
And I see myself forty years in the future, sitting in my mother’s Place after my grandmother is long gone,
Tucking stray strands behind her ear,
Having the same nonconversations,
And I grab her hand now, and between us is fifty years, nineteen of Which were given to me,
And my grandmother cannot speak, but we still speak to her of the Roses.