dead birds

My grandmother is crying.  She has been crying since my cousin decided to leave unannounced and move in with her boyfriend in Texas.  She has been crying since her friends moved into hospitals and nursing homes, crying since I shaved my hair in some places and let it grow in others.

Everything about her sags—skin sagging off the bone, sagging until it sways and dips into the gravy that I cannot and will not eat.  This is her first Thanksgiving without my grandfather.

The new baby is all badsmells and bugeyes.  My little cousin sings politcally-incorrect songs about Indian chiefs.  Oh, happy day of mass genocide!  Oh, happy day when aunts and uncles gorge themselves with beer and birdmeat!

And they ask me how is school and I say "fine."

I dreamed that you were stringing dead birds onto a thread.  They were small and black and their eyes were like shriveled raisons.  I think they were crows.  And you were peering at me from behind those too-round glasses and smirking like I knew what you doing.   You tied the string around your neck and tried to kiss me but you smelled like death and I pulled away.