Grandma's tapestries,

which she wove as a girl, are --


decaying with her.

Grandma is bored, she waits
for my wedding and perhaps
she fantasises that I'm getting pregnant

How would it have been
with grandfather and her in bed?
We don't talk about that

just about the afternoons
in the sun, gaining some
colour for the summer

She would have liked that, but
at that time people thought differently
Anyway, bikinis did not yet exist

So much has changed, she reads it
to me from the magazine
and I laugh at her astonishment

She is old, her hair as white
as the walls in this sun, lovely
Lu does not have to come yet

As I sit and searched my feelings, my thoughts are filled with you.

I think of all the memories created sending a flood of emotions through.

You would always say when someone would leave it was their time, they had to go.

And with those words you had to go but in years I needed more.

You said to remember the things you taught, as you would not be here to ask.

So I put on a face of certitude, a facade in the mode of a mask.

As now, I must face the world without you, much more than one could ask.

We assured you that your job on earth as a mother,  protector,  plus more was felt.

That your guidance through our lives, was much bigger than just help.

The love I feel when I say your name will always be the same

As my grandchildren continue to grow, they will all know your name.

I will share my fondest memories and tell them how this life I live you saved

and how with little and such a big heart the bountifulness of love you gave.

I will teach them as you taught me,  how Fords were designed and made tough

and I will always keep your loving memories as solace while times are rough.

Dear grandma, I remember you

and a few of your stories

of the war, the little big

dramas to commemorate



my children only hear them half

because of the bombardment

of images of wars far away

daily in the news



so

we play reality today

to feel, to know

how rending it is



I am the grandma and my daughter

is her mother, the street breaks

after a shot, the air creaks

and we hold our breath

a missed call notification lingers on my phone, taunting me in the small moments, reminding me of opportunities lost. A single minute voicemail replayed a hundred times. Your voice seeping into my marrow growing cold as it lingers. It's all I have left, all of you that remains. A notification, a reminder, a promise that just hours before it all, I was what occupied your mind.

A.C.