XIV

Grandpa has two homes.  He built his first on a small hillside 

meadow, cobbled from uneven stones.  Mortar snakes through 

frost-stretched clefts.  The rough outside resists rain’s smoothing 

touch, beckons the jagged outcroppings further up.

His second borders the VA in a forest of identical houses.  The 

inside is cramped.  Father takes the chair upholstered in dark 

brown.  Mother and grandpa occupy the sole bedroom.  Grandpa 

mostly sleeps on his hospital bed, his toupee dusting the nearby 

dresser.

Mother often emerges somber.  Today, she stammers grandpa has 

gone home.  She does not answer when I ask: the hillside home?  

Where, after downpours, new pebbles cluster in the backyard as if 

coming to say hello.  When I dart between the cars in his choked 

driveway, I yell out.  The stones return his name, edges soft and 

washed away.

XXI

All of West Virginia is a backroad.  After basketball games, Father 

finds the curviest, the most undulating.  Mother’s nausea follows a 

familiar arc: slow down, cracked passenger window, bickering with 

Father about whether I will get sick, all of winter invited inside to 

chill the plastic woodgrain.  Damp with sweat, I wrap myself in a 

towel, edges flapping as kiss-your-backside corners angle more 

wind inside.  A few of my pages freeze together into construction 

paper or a type of callus.  Mother’s head makes wobbly orbits.  I 

peak through the back glass.  Flurries kick up like eraser flakes 

until the next car shatters the night into another lurid revision.

XXII

Mother pulls forward, rolls down her window.  A pearled woman 

waves from behind glass as though she has known me all my life.

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Mother lays the plastic canister beside me.  I fold into an envelope, 

crawl inside as she rifles through her purse.

_____________________________________________

Without looking, Mother stuffs me full of quarters, a few small bills.

I do not yet know how to describe love.

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My two most vivid childhood memories: Space Mountain and pneumatic tubes.

______________________________________________

The woman presses me against the window.  Mother sees my green 

smudges, shakes her head.

The pens may need chains, but I am content on the cool marble.

XXIII

I am afraid to touch nanny’s skin.  Blue veins ride her 

knuckle-crest, threaten to break through the surface of her hands.  

Any slight tear might invite the already impatient world inside.  

Father steps into the hallway, calls the family.  Father finds time to 

share how nanny crawled to her bureau, crammed $20,000 into her 

purse before paramedics arrived.  Can’t take it with you—well she 

tried!  White sheets cast her sallow frame into stark relief.  Her 

pastor arrives.  Father stares ahead, auburn hair ashening, during 

the prayer.  From dust we are and to dust we will return.  No, keep 

nanny as she is: brittle paper that dreams of being golden.

XXIV

Father prepares the rite, pulls the mower beside the patio.  Dusk 

and summer loom in unison, evening a swamp that stills and sticks.  

Father clothespins me to the stuffed vinyl seat, says I’m done when 

the engine cuts since my flaps cannot reach the brake.  I trace the 

yard: soft zigzags around the rhododendrons, sharp corners around 

the utility building’s gravel, circles around last Christmas’ 

transplanted pine.  Tires trace sigils and small beasts into focus.

Father comes out later, haloed by fireflies, a small god who sparks 

but no longer catches fire.  He runs beside me, twists the key, 

laughs. I did not lower the mower deck.  Another legend for the 

annals.  There goes my son, the boy who could not hurt grass.