NaPoWriMo Day 26...Grandparents

My repetition poem...

Grandparents

Some little girl has four grandparents, 

their wrinkled hands and double chins, 

their rocking chair routines. 

Some little girl has a grandmother

who bakes everything from scratch, 

dips coconut balls into waxed chocolate. 

Some little girl hugs her grandfather, 

sits on his lap and plays with the loose 

skin on his face and gullet. 

Some little girl watches her grandparent’s habits,

coffee, newspaper, pencil, crossword puzzle,

water the plants, boil the oatmeal.

Some little girl sits at the dining table,

arms crossed over her chest 

shaking her head, refusing the oatmeal. 

Some little girl has two grandparents, 

but every little girl has at least four 

at one point. 

Some little girl smells their dry papery skin, 

their wrinkles taste of stale crackers,

their bathrooms reek of urine. 

Some little girl tells her mother, 

“I don’t want to go. I don’t like it there. 

I don’t even know her.” 

Some little girl goes to the elder home

and finds a shadow in the corner of the room,

staring with eyes made of blue stained glass. 

Some little girl has ghosts who she talks to 

in the night when she remembers 

music, a piano being played, a distant voice. 

Some little girl remembers cigarettes,

him standing on the porch underneath the eaves, 

his aged body soaking in the sunset as if it were his last. 

Some little girl has distant grandparents,

ones she’s never met, ones that never send a present, 

a card, ones that never cared enough. 

Some little girl built grandparents out of stories 

that her parents tell, as if each memory

was a piece of wood to craft a leg, an arm, a face, a throat. 

Some little girl has a grandmother 

that does not hug, instead she gives large spaces 

and words left unsaid. 

Some little girl craves to curl 

her heart into a fist, 

to harden it like a stone. 

Some little girl visits her grandmother in a funeral home, 

in a mausoleum, in the casket, in the dress

that she wore to the park that one spring day. 

Some little girl remembers a man

bent over his oxygen tank,

plastic mask hiding his aging face.