THE FOLLOWING POEM WAS SELECTED IN WINGWORD POETRY PRIZE 2023 LONGLIST.

picture the following: august 2020,

the country still in the first blush of disaster.

my grandmother, lying still and pale,

pale wires streaming from her wrists, her mouth.

the lower edge of her hospital gown had crumpled,

from my seat, I could see the starburst of scarring

at her ankles, the skin violently red and tight.

my mother explained to me, later, that my grandmother

had tried to get a job once, and had been burnt for it

by her family. this was hard to imagine: my grandmother

had never struck me as progressive. as a child,

she had forbade me from playing too long, warned me

against making friends with boys. only a few days before,

right before the ambulance had come for her, she had

only stopped crying long enough to grip my hand,

and beg me to obey my parents and to marry a good man.

she had never been the kind of indulgent grandmother

that my friends bragged about; she was irritable and strict,

loudly suspicious of everything and everyone. but now,

I couldn’t help but think of how everyone said

that i looked just like her – was that what she feared,

all those times she told me to be obedient, to be quiet,

to sit still? did she see me, and think of that scar,

still unfaded 50 years later? in the end, there wasn’t time to ask.

she was gone the next morning, quieter than she’d ever been.