Elegy: Grandma

I miss her hands

Taupe palms with slim lines of chocolate

Pond’s-soft velvet skin

Eighty years, none of them easy

Skin betrays no secrets

No lines no sagging no pores

Nails round short clean

Cupping my chubby face

Sneaking us peppermints

Turning to her favorite hymn

Adjusting the prosthesis in her mastectomy bra

Clapping praise at church

Adjusting her hearing aid

Putting money in Mommy’s purse when she wasn’t looking

Praying praying

Praying hands

I wanted those hands

To help me deliver

To fuss over my swaddling and feeding

Cup my children’s faces

Hold me

To breathe in Pond’s soft scent

Blanketed in the velvet of Grandma love

Instead, nothing

But grief and air

Coldly hold my face

Indifferent to my tears