Grandmother has a fever again.
We turn the heat off in her room, and we give her pills.
So hard for her to swallow, we crush them up into pudding.
And feed her one spoonful after another.
She stops, won’t open her mouth again.
She clutches the quilt, the one she sewed together so many years ago.
We will bury her in it.
An old jazz station is playing on the radio.
Miles Davis, I think. Or Coltrane.
“Let me go,” she whispers.
The winter ground is hard, but we still dig.
“That’s deep enough.”
And we wait. And wait.