Grandmother

There are those women who fret of life and what it might have to hold, or what it might not have to hold for them. But we are the women who hold for life, life does not hold for us.

Laying aside any naïve innocence we are the women dancing with spindles and growing crowns from lilies and lilacs, dancing in the layers of sash that wrap around you, wrap around me, and wrap us up together in a consistency of familial love that exists outside the boundaries of genetics.

Those eyes turned black with envy watch us picking aloe leaves and covering ourselves with feather plumes, covering ourselves with the kind of kisses that taste like we've been sugaring our fruit. Gazing from the distant towers these women saunter through their daily lives of jewelry, passing by the cages of string that we have contrived through the days and nights of a moon resplendent from the company of its ring.

We have built these women out of our garden, growing over in its abundance of wild fruit bushes providing our pathways of play, where we are seduced by a force to walk with these smiles upon our faces. In and around the time of day I spend all I can get with you whispering secrets to the listening ears of the portraits, the still frames of that child on the walls.

I heard a while back that this child began to partake of her own rebellion and now before me in paints and posies she wears slippers, and by the beat of her heart she provides a rhythm for us to dance to. She renders to us this sound like a choir of crimson light rays.

How long is it before my garments wear thin because they can not keep up with the wave thrilled under my feet? How long before those women peeking in at us see us, two women selfless and bound to each others light, each others dark, each others scarcity and, by all means of practice, bound to each others love. How long is it till I see my loving grandmother in the garden with me again.

Fancine Ruth