Escape

Watching my grandpa slither
in white worm, the sheets eternity

gave him to bathe in the pulse.
The rolling of his eyes glanced

at me with resilience. Sitting next
to him, my grandmother, withering

in the whispers of his thoughts. She
bares the waiting of his go.

His lowering body, soul alive in fire
just above the pit. He fights with coal

hands, shredded rock of wolf hunger
and bear claw, the hunter he was.

His spine was once tall as redwood
bark that pined against the banks

of forests. Now, his dilapidated spine
swims in the ripples of bed cloth.

My palm on his chest, the warm
thump is tender inside him.

The way his eye sockets drown,
deep with cave water, enough

to put a lantern out, or brush
the wavy hair of flames. His desert

yellow skin, grazed cheek bones,
the stretching of his creases avalanche

down towards his crooked smile, twisted
frown, the intimacy of silence.

Death waits like clockwork, no time
to know time. In the white room, he snows

forward, the blank of a questioned sky.
Where his eyes jitter upon, impatiently.

The light trying to leap from his bones
and continue living, unafraid, unearthed

by age.