the nurses in the icu are laughably fond of my grandmother,

their "lively little scottish woman"

with an accent thicker than blood pudding and the skull to match

she goes through hospital beds and rehab centers like they are old sweaters she is trying to get rid of, like the color of cable-knit monotony bores her

and she longs to try on different ways to die

she has never been the overstuffed floral couch in the living room or china teapot in the curio cabinet -

my grandmother gets into fistfights with God

and she never loses

time has carved creases into her forehead

sliced next to frowning mouth

made a home beside unsmiling eyes

tobacco-stained fingertips have grown clumsy, incapable of holding names and places without losing them between the recliner cushions. she is being strangled by memory's invisible hand, skin crumpled like a discarded idea, yellowing like honey and ache - a shrunken version of what she used to spill into our tea

she only ever drank coffee

diluted her bitterness with cream and sugar

she doesn't know where she keeps it in the cupboard anymore

her best friend died this summer

we watched my aunt jean placed next to her husband in a mausoleum several state lines away from home

the day after the funeral my mother got a call from the woman sinking six feet under,

"diane, if she's gone i don't want to be here either."

my grandmother used to be so afraid of death

she didn't notice it had already swallowed her whole

my grandfather smoked himself into the grave while i was still in the womb, and since that winter my grandmother has been wearing her cigarette smoke as a shroud in his honor

she has displayed her choice of death on front porch stoops and out of bedroom windows for over eighteen years

she isn't allowed to smoke anymore

her hands don't know how else to kill her

how fitting that her body would find another way to decay

one last 'fuck you' to a god she never prayed to

i have always made the people who hurt me into metaphors, as if that will soften the blows - and it never does. she used to be sharp to the touch, but she is too small to make into a metaphor now

i didn't ever know how to love her

i know even less how to lose her

it's just as well i never learned

she would have dropped my features in the sink with the dirty mugs and spare synapses

she was always lost to me.

she is building her coffin memory by memory,

nailing down the things she no longer knows how to hold

she forgot my mother's name first

and my mother was not surprised

how heavy it must be to know you are the least favorite child your whole life

and only be certain when the body that gave you that life betrays itself

her final goodbye happened months ago,

the summer is just a waiting room for all of us

she will be in the ground by the time i fly home, planted next to my grandfather

in my favorite cemetery

maybe she will finally find peace in the place where i have always felt at home

she has been so long without it

maybe she has forgotten what that word means, too