Repentance

Grandmother,
you floated through the echoing halls,
antiseptic glare of needles;
moaning passengers walked or crawled
beside you as you lurched,
burning smear of gel at your temples.
Men shook their heads,
women brought glass after glass
of metal water.
You curled tight into a corner
and waited to die.

You stayed ten years.
Through a caged-window
shredded light
forked hard down your back.

A different shadow:
the leaping spirit,
Butterfly Dance.
You were six.
You chased the waves
of cornstalks bending wide,
wind-swept tides through the corn,
your auburn hair.

You danced, fell
as children often do.
But it is the way that you fall,
the way in which it is broken,
direction, wind, corn.
It is better not to wonder
or dream about two eyes,
better not to linger
on what could have been
were it not for the stalk,
the wind, the fall, the doctor
distracted by a dinner missed.

You understood “shouldn’t,”
understood the fragment unnoticed,
the eye lost.
Jesus loved you, this you knew.
You grew smiling crooked,
head bowed.

Grandmother,
when we shrieked, slammed doors,
stalemates abandoned, dry and brittle,
fall leaves crackling under our feet
as we walked echoing halls,
tongues swelled with bitter aftertaste,
we stalked wide circles around each other,
hackles bristling, growling, eyes unmet.

Once, you tried to explain.
Through tears, you handed me a letter
yellowed and creased,
the answer to who you were
and what you went through.
I would not read it
and, choking back tears, you told me
you had wanted to kill them all.
If not for the baby, you would have.
You were explaining what I meant to you
under all the vicious exchanges,
shotgun words, thunderclap crack
of slamming doors.
But I was twelve and rolled my eyes,
did not listen.
I was twelve.

Grandmother,
you will find love
in the crevices of all
the glaring reproaches
I flung at your feet.
All the years I would not be held by you,
would not listen to you,
all the years I smirked in your God’s face,
brought me here,
when I cannot tell you
that you meant enough
to break my heart by your leaving.