Elegy Poem: ode to my grandmother’s best friend, by Sam Parmett

i read a poem:
Ocean Vuong’s
first lines of a
love letter to himself–
and the waters break

i think of how i’ll
never see her smile
as her eyes scan the
unfinished paintings
in the drawing room

to ask if she will
teach me how to shape
a face the way she does
with mere black lines
almost scribbled

i always wanted to sit
beside her as she painted
on a wooden park bench
watching her thin fingers
move as a brush

i squandered all my
chances and dementia set
in before i acquired sentience
she no longer
knew me

and i had never known her

when my mother told me
she was gone i imagined
the paintings sitting against
the walls in her drawing room

following her into the
cramped space in awe
of her colors
her brushstroke
her imagination
her eyes

i wonder of the stories
she never got to tell me
i wonder how i might’ve
asked her for them

i wonder what she would
have said to me
if i’d ever made the effort

if i’d become self aware
early enough
to love her as she was
instead of as i saw her

i thought of my mother
how she never cries
wondering if her waters
had broken down
afraid to face her if
they had

when i did see her
she told me she was fine
and she was fine
away from her,
i had forgotten
her emotionlessness

she was fine
and i was remembering
all the times i hadn’t
spent with this woman
i barely knew

who
mere days ago
i sang to
in the hospital bed
set in her apartment
the one i’ve always adored
on University and 10th

beside NYU’s campus
where people i know
will be attending next fall
where she cheerfully attended
my music memory competition
in fifth grade

where we walked through
washington square park
celebrating how my peers
had won for us

she was not yet demented
and she was proud of me
unaware i had been useless
we had gone back to her apartment
with her bowl of heart rocks
atop the kitchen table
collected from around the world

brought back by her and kids and grandkids
(one of whom i’d always wished to be)

months ago i unearthed
the card she’d drawn for my
parents in honor of my birth
a chubby pink baby
smiling in its newborn cap

her rendition of me
without yet having seen
i wonder what she thought
of me afterwards