O, my badly loved grandmothers, I kin you to me, facelessly. I wrap all our deaths around my shoulders like a fox pelt coat: grandmother across oceans and ages, grandmother across the border, grandmother carried off by soldiers, grandmother carried into endless highway by disease or dog or dawn’s unrelenting purge. I wrap until I’m made of grandmother, until the ritual musk of their dreams is sprouting from my skull: sandalwood, ambergris, copper of blood, coin copper, clay of approaching dusk.
