when my great grandmother

was in a comma, i wrote a poem

at her bedside

something about roses and Tang,

the clinking spoon, collard greens and

candy stores i stole 5-cent gum from –

apologies and grace;

a basement where my father

slept off the lows of high life,

of trucking;

something about the way

time passes, a pollen of sorts

working its way through rain

towards infinity

or the oil slick rainbow

beneath his white Coupe Deville

with curb feelers and

blue suede, a door too heavy

to open alone ||

when i saw her, i thought

of those curb feelers;

eyes closed, tubes in nose

i imagined them: sentimental, sentinels

scanning, feeling around, loosening,

pulling away her memories –

the work of a soft palm

on a chest growing tired

of rising ||

memories she forgot she remembered,

the ones that begin like fairytales and end

with a comma, an empty page, a heavy door

waiting for someone to open it ||

i wanted to open it || all 90lbs of me

crouched beneath a squat rack trying

to rise above the weight of a silence

i was too child, too unknowing to probe;

my tiny quads strong enough for

reverse layups, strong enough to hold

my body upright to touch her hand

and nothing more ||

i wrote a poem,

a grammatically incorrect poem

in green ink that wondered

something about the time

it takes to find the right questions –

an entrance to her memories before

the tubes got there, before i learned

how history lodges itself

in the body,

how time passes itself

between lips ||

before i learned how to correctly use

an ellipsis, i learned my index finger

can curve into a comma

around thumbs that once opened

band aids for me;

that a comma

and a coma

are not that different after all //