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were testing the emergency break, she would scream Faster!
I would accelerate smoking engine hauling us into pitch black
then the pause – the heaving chest would suck in breath
as she tugged the lever towards the roof. Courageous animal
I would inhale my vomit. But our laughter would slice through
the night like a blossoming womb, like a gaggle of fireflies
like a wail fisting its way from the throat during a funeral.
Now, my grandmother lugs her soiled ass to the couch
where her husband used to sit, and I follow.
I nestle my head in her lap.
It is a myth that grief is a garden of bones the earth is muscular
enough to clutch on to. When my grandmother weeps,
it is from every pore and she peels herself from living with lumps
of an ache that propel her into the blue. I have lost her kite strings
now, but I have planted a tree in her name. It grows without a husband
to mourn come Autumn and it sheds like hallelujah, like these beast bones have learned to disjoint, to dissolve into the night.