She’s still living with
the consolation-prize cat.
“Haughty,” she says.
“Patches gives me the cold shoulder.”
My grandmother, the cat,
and I, all green eyed,
all on the couch.
“They are building a new
Alzheimer’s unit,” she says.
“I don’t think I have it.
Do you?”
The cat jumps to the
windowsill to watch the
men, bandanas over their necks,
they blow the lily trimmings
away with screaming machines.
“That must be scary,” I say.
Living where people die
all the time.
The man with the oxygen,
he stopped coming down to his chair.
She lives in a past-the-expiration-
date place now.
She knows there’s a “spoiled” place.
The lilies wear red hats
and dry June has taken the
green from their spines.
“I don’t know,” I tell her.
“But people will take care of you.”
“There’s nothing on television,”
she says.
“But then, I’m a cranky
old lady.”
And for someone else–
what an unusual wish–
I wish there was
something on television.
Landing 