Content Warning: grief, death

For my grandmother

Through rusted night, I carried you over a dream hill,

vertical, crust like dried blood. Your gauzy frame,

my laboured stumble, your hair a silver lantern

in my arms.

Then loomed the gateway carved of sky:

across a copper line of death, you stepped,

awash in honeyed river-light, free at last.

Here, I rinse your body for the last time

comb silver hair, wipe grey skin in

morning light, remember your smile.

Dress a cold slab of trunk and legs in

embroidered white.

You are beyond flames now:

these concerns of flowers and eulogies

those constraints of love and duty.

In a river, you pirouette at last:

a wild bird in love with the wind.

***

The memory of a dream six months before the passing of my paternal grandmother whom I called Maji, and the final rituals on the morning of her funeral.