Grandma

To my grandma pain is not bleed,
but collects itself slowly-
like a prayer before it is uttered.
Where we are weighed down with air,
supressing a scream, day after day.
The sound threatens to break through our seams,

where gold lines part our hands.
She knows without saying a word,
that we’re the most sensitive books in the world.
And that we spend too long hiding chapters
beneath our flesh, and translating lines between
our bloodstreams, until these books become windows.

We gradually fade to translucence
and lose pages like memory.
Until no-one shares their stories anymore.
Just about surviving ,through our speechlessness.
We give nothing away but our hearts,
and hide our feelings as though we are russian dolls,
pushing away pain through the layers of our flesh.

She reads my palms and before I know it my hands are in hers,
and everything rises through my skin.
She smiles, even when she knows that these
phrases are so fragile, they could collapse under breath.
Hope floats, she reminds me, that is how you know what to write.