Inheritance
A poem
There is a brown double ring
Around the inside of my grandmother’s
Faded ivory Fiestaware water jug
From the iced tea I made for you
Two Sundays ago
The dishes came to me last year
As she curled into herself
Across the Deep South town
In as good a nursing home as exists
For people like her
I had eaten off of the dishes as a child.
I loved the wild colors:
Poppy orange, cobalt blue, turquoise,
This eggshell ivory, a canary yellow.
She made me bologna and pimento cheese sandwiches with Fritos
Like she gave Papa for work in a mid-century lunchbox.
She baked homemade bread almost every day;
That smell meant she was out of bed
The remaining dishes were brought across the country behind her
Weary and furious in a senile psychosis
We either underestimated
Or denied
Until silence replaced the fighting and
No one knew how to talk
to each other anymore
I pressed, I molded, I kneaded
Into her calcified hand and foot,
Begging the blood to move, move
To untangle the paralyzed muscles,
Be alive again — just enough to prove
She could walk out of there
When I left her for the last time, they gave me her dishes.
I wondered if she would hang on another week
I wanted to be there
But no, she died the next day.
I never liked Sundays —
too much about to begin —
Until I woke up with you on maybe
Two of them
Octobers are no better
She went then, and so did you.
