Ashes, Ashes

The hospital bed is an anomaly

in my grandmother’s plush living

room. The dull silver clashes

with the gold-accented décor.

She can’t see it — can’t see anything

— though this doesn’t keep her

from caring about looks.

Paint my nails, she demands

of her sister: OPI Dutch Tulips.

Fix my wig, she demands

of me: volume. “The higher the hair...”

An eater all her life, a cook,

never an exerciser. But now,

she is thin — not in the way that cigarettes

make a woman thin in the short-term,

but in the way that cigarettes

make a woman thin in the long-term.