My Mother's Mother

Here I sit in the outskirts of your paradise, my
fear, my head between my aging hands. I am nearly four annual-
filled miseries away from thirty, and I cannot
smoke these Marlboros fast enough to lay
deep within this lawn, entangled in
your see-through, vein-faced arms.

A year ago, about a leisurely moving quarter
past twelve in the ample, starlit morning, I fell
into a sweet, undisturbed, blue
laziness. A year ago, about an obdurate half
past twelve in the excruciatingly sunlit
afternoon, you blundered at the evening’s impending
moon, and prayed us a fond
valediction.

After my birth, I was diagnosed as emotionally
ill. During your life, I accepted the sentiment of being
rescued. After it, I was prescribed peace in the form of
a pill. I ruminate your essential complexion urgently
through my head; a sovereign foreigner, a human
chimney that could out smoke any man, a barbecuing chicken-
charcoal loving queen, and a powerful woman afflicted
by Alzheimer’s, Dementia, Emphysema, and Asthma.

A tattered snapshot of you, sending
me off to tap the sublime heights of indispensable
youth on a rubber seat, holding on for Crayola-
obsessed life manifested into chains, that reads Kodak in
grey type, housed in a teal-sparked, copper-
made skeleton, remains obligated to all the park
birthday parties you sumptuously hosted. The homeless
and I never went hungry.

You had clothed me in tender pride up until your final
lungful. You fed me Big Macs minus the thousand-
island dressing, bought me bouncing tie-dye balls, and acrylic
paint. I remember your laughter, the dearest
dose to a six-year-old’s despondency, as you’d make me
breakfasts of splendid glory to wake to.

Your body was exhausted of that phenomenally, godly
spirit on a Thursday morning. I now wake to
your license of vocal sound tapped out
at the hub. Frozen, green grape promises waft
through my conscience. Your remains reside in
thoughts of immortality, as the vision of your curls
doused in Alberto V05’s hot oil keep me afloat, while
spun out on your lingering nicotine.