My grandmother putters around the house,

Quiet, dazed, often confused—

her eyes watery and clouded over.

She’s a shrunken version of her former self,

with a Q-tip shaped head

and mussed gray-white perm,

low hanging breasts like dried apricots,

her bony frame,

half dressed in jeans and a pajama top.

I remember laying my head in her lap as a child

where she sat on the rough, woolish sofa,

exchanging chisme with my visiting mother—

she would scratch my head, weaving her nails

in and out of my hair, loosening the long braid

that hung down my back.

Then she was round, with large, soft breasts

and a shameless bulge around her middle.

She smelled like my favorite flower: gardenia,

and a pink powder puff, and sometimes like the

soaked canela and plump raisins she stirred into the

oatmeal drink she made for me every morning.

She was home for me, always,

and she was as full of life as she was fat,

maybe more so.

She was funny, and silly, and god forbid

you didn’t do what she told you,

out came the chancla and a chase!

But I never feared my grandmother:

between my younger brother and I,

I was the obedient one, the one who followed

all the rules, and who would do anything she asked:

“Mija, let’s dance,” she would say

in her sing-song voice,

and we would swing and spin wildly

across the kitchen linoleum

as dinner simmered nearby.

She prayed with me, she sang to me,

she turned to the night music to help me fall asleep:

“Can you hear the crickets, Mija?”

and I would strain my whole body to listen for

their silent symphony until

I became tired enough to finally shut my eyes

and drift away.

She cleaned and dressed me,

she bandaged my scrapes,

she took me to church—

she protected me and collected my tears

for years and years, she left the door cracked

at night, and the light on in the hallway.

She was somehow all-knowing,

even before I could open my mouth to tell her

how the kids teased me at school

because I cried for her;

even when I ran away to Los Angeles,

and we didn’t speak or see each other for years.

She sent love letters to me anyway

in writing as delicate as lace,

and I secretly tucked them behind my dresser

after poring over every detail, alone

in my studio apartment.

When I returned,

she taught me how to care for my baby;

She cooked hundreds of thousands of meals,

She ran the dishwasher,

she was ordinary,

she was stubborn,

she was disciplined,

she loved and was loved deeply.

One day she didn’t wake up,

and I was the first to find her

on my way to the shower,

to shake her shriveled body:

once, twice, a third time

before my heart could register

what my mind was shouting—

and then—

silence,

all but for a loud ringing in my ears.

Then there was the sweaty panic

that washed over me

as I called and called for my nearly deaf grandfather

to come fix it, to breathe life back into her body,

to comfort me though he couldn’t comfort himself—

now he shook uncontrollably, his face contorted—

almost 50 years his bride and suddenly a shell

of the woman we knew and cherished.

Where there once was softness, now all had

turned to stone.