#mygramma
I gave her a five-leaf clover,
And, then, she was diagnosed with cancer.
I, then, gave her a four-leaf clover,
After, to “make it all better”.
Who would’ve known that I’d jinxed her?
©2025Ellen Finn
Nov 22, 2025
Nov 22, 2025 at 4:24 PM UTC
I would
Call it a pendant;
She would call
It her “medal”.
[“Oh—my medal?”]
I inherited a Mother Mary
Pendant-medal;
Her most prized possession;
Other than her wedding ring and band.
This medal, here, was “Blessed by The Pope”,
When she was a young age. She never took it off,
But when she took a shower.
…Or, when she went for a scan [toward the end]
Of some-sort…
This medal
Has been saved
By, nearly, every aunt.
[Once, it was my fault that it was almost lost.
I had got the necklace tangled in
A folded pillowcase at a hospital.
Thank God that it was found.
I, almost, do not deserve keeping track
Of such a special piece of her history.
Sometimes, I feel so unworthy.]
The aunts would wear her medal
When she went for scans. Keeping her medal
Close to their hearts, as I will do, since, it has been
Passed on “From my neck to hers”, she’d said.
And I saw her, Peaceful;
Resting.
It went to me, but I plea
That it does not get misplaced
By me.
©2025Ellen Finn
Nov 22, 2025
Nov 22, 2025 at 2:17 PM UTC
My Gramma and My Pop-Pop’s
First date was The Ice Capades.
I have the booklets to prove it from the
Very date—1950—she would have been fifteen.
She was fifteen, and in-love;
Married at nineteen.
He took her to Frank Sennes’ Moulin Rouge;
Theater Restaurant. These booklets—
These booklets smell like her perfume;
Chanel #5. I wonder who she had shown
These booklets to; I wonder how
I came to inherit these booklets;
Or I wonder how these booklets were out,
Or there, for me as a keepsake…? These booklets—
These booklets—Oh—how my history is tangled up in
These booklets—Oh—these booklets. I only see one date on
One-of-the-four of these booklets. She did say that,
Her and My Pop-Pop, “We had kept up with it”,
Because My Gramma, and My Pop-Pop had loved the
First date so much.
“I knew then”, she’d say,
About being fifteen, and in-love.
©2025Ellen Finn
Nov 21, 2025
Nov 21, 2025 at 4:41 PM UTC
But a whisp of poetry—
A thought; an after-thought.
A Beautiful Stanza;
Standing all on its own.
But she was “The Now”;
In a KNOWING sense.
She brought me poetry and flowers;
White peonies, nonetheless.
And I have a plant; a [ticket] stub;
A root of what was.
©2025Ellen Finn
Nov 21, 2025
Nov 21, 2025 at 4:11 PM UTC
In a dream,
My Gramma's cancerous lump,
Shot out of her
When she went to the bathroom. Then we
(As a collective family) were concerned,
Because she had decided
That she had wanted the surgery. In the dream,
To take out the rest of the cancerous tumors,
Of which, had spread. ...To her larynx, and other places,
Like her lungs,
But small, tiny, little demons
Were too tiny to get with the surgery.
She was operated on, and the surgeons had tried to get it,
All at once. But, then, in the dream,
She died on the table.
Leaving us
To grieve. Again.
©2025Ellen Finn
Nov 20, 2025
Nov 20, 2025 at 7:35 PM UTC
I could not find what I was looking for; the confectionary
Sugar shaker that My Gramma said that I could have
When she passed on. The story goes:
My Gramma had
Got hers as a wedding gift.
My Nana had the same, exact
Sugar shaker. My Gramma had “promised herself”
That the top would not get dented,
Like Nana’s. But, alas,
The sugar shaker did get dented at the top.
And my Gramma had verbally said that I could have it,
After she had passed on, then, when I had asked, at the age of twelve.
It would have been, technically,
Three generations of a sugar shaker being passed on,
But, alas, it will be none.
©2025Ellen Finn
Nov 21, 2025
Nov 21, 2025 at 3:40 PM UTC