Lifting Her

Grammy used to cry over tomatoes

When she held them in her hand

To admire. She’d wheel her chair

To the sink, shuffling along.

She wasn’t paralyzed.

Her old bones just couldn’t carry

Her weight anymore though she was tiny-thin,

Tiny boned. Her two feet shuffling

Along the wood floor. The tiny whirling of wheels.

When I was little, she’d lift me up to dance.

And then I lifted her. She’d wrap her legs around me

As I swung her around the kitchen floor

Before setting her back down to hard wood and chairs that roll.

She would tell me to roll with things. After one hundred years

You have to find beauty in growth, in the sweet redness of ripe fruit,

In just hearing music even if you can’t dance yourself.

Her tears would come silently down her cheeks.

With one trembling hand she would wipe them

away, angry at their betrayal. Her hand was harsh

Against her skin.

“Ma, be gentle,” Dad would say.