I was once wise, but now, old
All I am, is shelter from the cold

Stripped back, until survival is all
Hold me steady and delay my fall

But the signs are clear, they are my fear
Who keeps their will, when their end is clear?

A forgotten fool for facing it whole
But who's to say denial heals the soul?

I see in your eyes, a reminder of the days
Before i saw you in disturbing haze

You ask me one last time, to remember our dreams
But they're of another life and i'm tearing at the seams

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.