My Grandfather

My grandfather, who owned a rubber parts factory
and never let anyone sit in his prized easy chair,
became very clumsy as he grew increasingly
elderly. Started losing his marbles one autumn.
He went around dropping memories like fumbled
loose change, losing a couple of those glass spheres
each day. He lost more and more as winter
approached. Some memories would pour out of
his ears like water and land in the grass, taking
root and sprouting up as crabapple or orange
trees, bearing bitter, inedible fruit, while others
leapt from his mouth as corn-yellow birds,
taking wing and flying away beyond the clouds
to where the Sun and Moon tend their starry brood.
He tried to hold onto his memories to no avail:
he tried taping up his head to seal his orifices,
but he couldn’t breathe. He tried stuffing cotton
in his ears to plug them, but he couldn’t hear.
He tried filling his mouth with clay, but he couldn’t
eat. And he got clumsier and clumsier as the
year waned and he kept dropping memories,
their crystal notes tinkling softly as they hit the
floor and rolled out the door. He forgot how to use
his hands, and couldn’t open doors, and then
his feet, and became bedridden. He lost the memory
of how to see, and thereafter saw nothing.
My grandmother was beside herself. None ever
came back once he lost them, and soon none were
left to him except the memory of how to breathe.
When that one left too, he smiled and closed his eyes,
and let all the air leave his lungs for the last time.
Just like falling asleep.


---Published in Eunoia Review, Feb. 2024
https://eunoiareview.wordpress.com/2024/02/28/my-grandfather/
---Posted here Dec. 6, 2024