I’ve decided to never be a grandmother:

to never wear grandmother hands
or simper in grandmother clothes.  
I won’t stand
in a grandmother kitchen
baking grandmother bread
and pull crabgrass in the afternoon,
crabbing about my grandmother back;

dying my roots
to a color other than grandmother
just so I don’t look so grandmotherly
in these shoes
with this gait
and gardening silly-faced flowers
to spread on the ocean

like my grandmother did.

I refuse to play bridge or hearts
and any other grandmother games;
to smell like moth *****
rolled in the hems of grandmother cardigans
and broomstick skirts

or heap salt on my broccoli
because my grandmother tongue only works
to chide my daughter
time and again
about how seldom she visits

or to buy a grandmother clock on QVC
so that I can await the stillness of its hands
buried deep in grandmother exile,

like my grandmother did.