so I was bored. This is what I did last sunday:

The house smelled like the elderly
which is the blunt way of saying it smelled
like mold, and mildew, and the dark earth, covered
lightly with a veil of potpourri and perfume. I entered
second to last, behind my grandmother and father and
grandfather and mother. my brother was behind me and
there were stiff, cold hugs and strained smiles of bodies who
had never met, before us--it was walking in to a wall.

the afternoon stretched on in bars of light that fell
through pink and purple curtains: how the dust motes
were silent and leaden. the words were punctured by
little holes of silence, the kind of hush that settles in a car
when passing by a graveyard and the children hold their breaths.
the hush as she tells us how her daughter died last spring
she was making pancakes as her the aneurism hit her brain . . . the little
boy woke up to find them burning on the oven.

the old woman, my grandmother’s friend, not seen
and out of mind for these 50 years. her eyes were strong, so
strong that I could not tell if the cancer was in her lungs
or if it hung in the air; the cause of it? her radiation. her presence.
I dare anything to come for her. I dare anyone to speak down upon
the human race.

she wrapped her husband in a quilt, a soft bed. she kissed him as he
died! that is to say . . .
he was hit by a car, and she was trained in mouth-to-mouth—
not very well. he was dead before the ambulance arrived. the quilt she
laid him in was
colorful?
large?
warm and just right
or maybe just covered in flowers. yes, the flowers of all 50 states
richly embroidered and she had been offered Six Thousand and
Three Hundred Dollars for it, and it had won First Place at the fair.
Such a bouquet will not fade. Is that a moth’s wing falling to the floor.
We will have to buy more mothballs. We shall have to stay and eat.