Improv 1, Week 12

Elegy for my Grandmother

For you, Sunday breakfast was grits, fried grouper and anything
reclined in the freezer with a crown of ice.
Your knuckles, swollen like ripe grapes, swayed and stuttered
through biscuit dough as my sister and I ducked
in cabinets and pantry shelves to bring you whatever you called for.

I remember you in the kitchen of my one-bedroom apartment
while I fret over the blunt edge of a knife that barely carves
past the hirsuit flesh of a Kroger-bought peach to its core.
Not once did you ever make us cobbler, not once
did cinnamon dust your wrist red with crushed spice or
the slough of burning stars you'd one day hide behind.

While my maternal family progressed northward to bury
the fruit of your bones in a Carolina plot,
I was at the mall, teasing the pleats of a star-studded skirt.
I didn't remember you then.

After breakfast we'd crowd around your wheelchair,
watch television. You'd rest your hand on my head, fall asleep.
Your touch washed over me like syrup.
I loved you when you lived.

With the cobbler done, I take a hot scoop with ice cream. One bite
and I can tell something integral is missing.

In memoriam, I obediently release balloons for your birthday--
July 4th. My only hope
is that the fireworks do not pop them before they shrink
to an indiscernible seed in the sky.
I never cry. Rain doesn't fall up.