TRAGIC Poem: The Grandmother We Knew, by Christine Heriat

You were a young woman once,
in a print with frayed edges.
Black-and-white.
A bright smile, on faded paper,
worn by someone we didn’t recognize.

Children, grandchildren forget
you existed before them.
Hopes, dreams you
carried across a border.
Which border, you never said.

The woman with alive, aware eyes
who is so unlike the person
we knew,
did not know,
could not know.

A scared shadow out of touch with
normal life.
Possessed by paranoia,
unable to engage.
Intolerable.

To know you is the chance we never had
because,
by the time we arrived,
you were already lost to the sickness
of your own mind