At first,
she'd fumble for the words sometimes
or stumble in the hallway,
but now when she gets up at night,
and I wake suddenly somehow after 2 flat shuffles,
and rush in to help her to the bathroom,
she yells a dadaist poem at me,
her finger pointed at my chest.
"And the, the what! And the you! And the book! You oughta!"
She is all exclamation points,
her mouth a toothless snarl.
I imagine William S. Burroughs taking furious notes in the corner,
but i know she means to say,
"how dare you wake up at 4am
to help me
when you are my grand-daughter?
And even though I don't have words anymore,
I worry about you,
and I am supposed to take care of you.
and I am ashamed things are so backwards, now."

She is always furrowed, now.
I cannot comfort her.
Even in her sleep, she asks loudly,
"Am I alright? Is everything alright? I don't know. I just don't know."
She calls for help, but doesn't know why by the time I arrive from the next room.
I guess wildly, as she grows impatient.
Sometimes her hair feels too heavy on her neck,
Sometimes the painting on the wall is crooked,
but mostly it is something else she just can't put her finger on,
a knowing that life--
which so diligently held her so steady for 96 years,
as she sat at her sewing machine and hosted dinner parties in regal pant suits--
has given up and gone askew,
like the ground in a pinball machine,
and she is lost in perpetual motion,
wandering its back alleyways,
everything familiar but nothing quite right.

I tell myself I am here to care for her,
to bear witness, and honor her process
of dying,
as if I am somehow above it,
outside her strange-smelling world,
looking on.
But when I am with her,
I cannot help but be reminded of my own mind, my own life,
also estranged from me,
also suspended.

I cannot help but wonder what went wrong.