My grandma died on April 9th.
Not sure of the year.
All I know is that a death rattle is real,
and that when a body begins to die,
it eats itself.
Each time I’d visit,
she’d turn more and more into a corpse.
Her cataracts turned her brown eyes
into a milky gelatin.
She never ate much,
we always worried
when she’d leave
half her plate
of food,
“you need to eat,” we’d say—
“I’m full,” she’d answer
Stomach cancer ate her small intestine.
She withered as thin as a wafer.
I’d watch her rub her belly
each night
before she’d go to bed.
The day before she died, she
called me over to her—
told me to get as close
as I could stand it.
She was blind by then.
She said sometimes,
small lines would form the shape
of something
like a head,
or a smile
inside her eyes.
She wrapped her cold fingers on my warm face,
kept them there and cried,
begged for my forgiveness
told me I was beautiful.
“I’ll wait for you,” she said.
I nodded in her hands.

One reply on “sweet memory of soil (poem #13)”
Thank you. I know this too well. Now you know that we share this.This commonality of all people, all races. Empires of dust.
LikeLiked by 1 person