Sitting

sitting, still and here with my grandma
learning to wait on the trickling words
small economies too complex for analysis

the smell of an old place
sudden screams just down the hall
(startling mostly in their lack of power to startle)
belie the soft light and flat screen tv, a Christmas relic
of a family that still visits nearly every day

I am visited instead by guilt
for living too far away
for the six months that have passed since
the last confession of my face before hers

the daily pound on an uncooperative body
and mind active but tiring – the two meeting less and less often

All of this makes me somehow whole –
not glad, not that,
as I hide tears from the night nurse – but full,

Our responsibilities to each other
sinking like mud into the chinks of weakness and pain
to flesh out the place our hearts reside.