A cluster of aging oak trees orbited the house. The roof was missing a few shingles and mildew lay damp in the wall. In the light flooding through the tall windows of the wide room I’d play with G. I. Joe figures. Grandmother gave me a box of See’s every December. Snowflakes falling from the sky in December: they sway in the air like dancers in orbit. Around Christmas, we’d visit my grandmother up at her house in Apple Valley. Jingle Bells! I’d spend the night in my father’s old room. Through his window, crystalline oaks caked in white. Years passed and I saw the dimming of her light. She’d think it was May when it was December and not know how she had gotten to a room. Newton’s force sustains planets’ solar orbit but no lure could hold her here. A stray shingle. My mother explained to me, Your grandmother has dementia, which means that your grandmother’s losing her memory and can’t think straight. Light floods through the windows, G.I. long gone. Shinglers stomp around on the roof. Come this September the walls will be made fully unabsorbent. By then she had been moved to a lonely room in an assisted living building. The room’s windows looked out at the fence. My grandmother had forgotten that we put Man in orbit. She’d try and guess my name but was rarely right. She’d ask the nurse, Where am I? (no remembrance of having moved to Des Moines) when her shingles smarted and woke her up at night. Her shingles, scarlet sunspots. Packed into the holy room, the snowflakes dancing outside. Died December 29th. Down the nave aisle rolls grandmother. Through the colored stained-glass windows, hallowed light. Star Tribune published her obituary. Rain drips down new shingles and off grandmother’s house. Toys orbit a newborn bathed in sunlight. Some new family filled its rooms that December.
Originally published in issue 13 of Palaver Arts Magazine at the University of Southern California.
Loved this piece! Sestinas are one of my favorite types of poems because if you aren't looking for the repeated words, it is easy to forget that the poem follows any structure at all :)