Must is a memory of the cellar.
My grandfather would sleep down there when they spent the night.
Me, not really keeping him company,
just being uncomfortably in the same space.

The plastered walls floated a talc-y powder that would linger
in my throat
And on my tongue.

Later when he was dying,
the discomfort still remained,
but subsided as he grew weak
in that big loud frame of his.