my grandmother was a person who could fly
and don’t even try to tell me I imagined that
because I saw it with my own two eyes,
and I never asked why, or how

when she had the time, my grandmother used to climb
up all of the stairs with me, and when we reached the roof
****! she had disappeared, off into the great blue sea of the sky
and I used to wonder why she brought me with her

was it so I got used to seeing her disappear
because when it really happened, she did disappear,
only this time it was down, not up,
and mum got all choked up
and wouldn’t look me in the eye

was it so I knew that she could do it,
so that when it really happened I could understand
that the place where she came to land might be somewhere else,
somewhere above the clouds, not like everyone else’s grandmothers who just ended up underground

my grandmother could fly, and I used to stare up at her
as she swooped between the tangled wisps of cloud,
perhaps planning the route for later on, planning how
she might get up to the golden gates before it was too late,
and there was no light to see by,

and she had to find her way in the dark