Sunday, May 4, 2025

70-year-old newborn

My head overhanging the undone bed, a hushed observer

I behold the fresh force of life clasped clumsily

between the fingertips of the woman I call grandmother.


Her legacy is my inheritance, yet she fervently

mines my few years of life for a lesson to make hers.


Seated inches below my eyeline, she chews

nervously on the ends of her thick dyed hair.


My wisdom sagacious, her curiosity like a toddler

with ambitions to build the highest tower of blocks.


The insides of my grandmother's mind defrosting,

a decade of stalactites that suspended movement.


Her paralysis an act of defiance against God's thievery;

refusal to participate in a world that denied what was hers.


Once treading in scorn for those who could not perform

her most desired, magical miracle.


Longing for the dead kept her from living; 

now, she survives on the miracle of her own beating heart.


A toddler excitedly wobbling as it learns to take its first few steps;

A woman nearly seventy learns life's rudimentary pieces.


She wants to flex her muscles. She yearns to love someone new.

Drops of honey emit from wrinkles collected around her eyes.


Eyes wide, anxiously awaiting my answers--

She asks me how I knew that he was the one.


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