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Poor Grandma,
lying in a box
somewhere in New Jersey.
How bird-like you were
in the end, so fragile, so delicate,
like your crystal
collecting dust now
in my closet.
You asked me
how it would be,
death.
I had no answer.
"I suppose
it's like going to sleep,"
you said.
Yes, like going
to sleep,
I repeated.
What could I say?
I miss you now, especially
that smell
of an old Jewish woman
who loved me
more than herself,
and wanted only the best
for all of us.
You went to sleep.
Too tired to wake up,
you died.
A month later,
it begins to hit me.
Grandma's dead.
1971