Grandmothers

The room filled in your name, bustling children, grandchildren,

Their fast conversations vivacious crescendos, but your presence

Barely sustains, it seems as if you take less space with each rattling

Breath, you leave early and the bubbling, roiling energy reclaims

The vacancy in seconds, after you gingerly bestow a present with

Crooked claw hands, but a shaking fumble later, the box bends

On thick carpet and maroon blood blossoms below your transparent

Skin, ghost skin, crinkled over darkening pools, almost a surreal

Memory already, like the other grandmother, of whom my impressions lie

Foggy with the wear of time, pulling mere reflections from the surface

Of a once sea, acrid perfume of cigarettes, curiously stiff hair,

Soft eyes, overlarge as my father’s, staring out from a startling

Photograph, this woman I never consider, long packed into stuffy

Attics of ancient memories like the corroded silver jewelry eagerly

Snatched from drawers she no longer needed, soon forgotten by chaotic

Children, now of all places I see that face alongside the other

Grandmother, ironically among a celebration of age, yet the aged

Here shocks me with fragility, the resounding fall of the tightly wrapped

Gift calling attention to twisted fingers, the outlines of meager bones,

Hollow bones, mirroring the traces of thickening joints and spider hands

Of my mother, the nonlinear curve of my own pinky, as thin below supple

Skin so unlike my parchment genetic destiny, and now, holding

Ice on her lurid bruise growing like fungus, vainly trying to stem

This burgeoning weakness, I remember the other, unlined face that never

Will appear at its own eightieth birthday party but smiles jauntily from

The muted photograph with a permanent fortitude, unchanging youth.