Hold me tight, grandma….

Jaded eyes shadowed by dark hemispheres,
dreading the truism of that final call to the pavilion.
As if the trials of seven long decades wasn’t a battle sufficient,
there is a last mile tread that’s no less a crucible.

A heart sundered by a lifetime of losses,
of human treasures of those yestermoments;
yet embraced us, new arrivals, as we toddled by,
to partake in that reservoir of love,
that knew no bounds but to proffer
with a zest so relentless and so pristine.

Those hands so lithely
that had once tucked me into her bosom,
graced by their once glowy skin
now abridged to a crushed and stretched tissue
marked by a million faultlines left by time

Fingers fragiled, threadbared by years
of nurture, of all and sundry,
clinches that familiar warmth latent
yet, so palpable, as they feebly tug into my palm

And those misty eyes frozen
in the stillness of the present,
relive the lingering memories
that gallop by from the long gone past.

A spirit unstymied by the tortuous journey
still stands tall, behind a shriveled skin,
those corroded bones, and a decrepit shell
with grace appended to a morbid final lap

A life, long lived, yet so ephemeral
for those that cherished the hearth
of that slowly fading heart.
And here, I stand to watch her wither
with moments fleeting by
And wish for once, for a heart of stone.

Is it life, to stoically stare?
as loved ones bid goodbye
Yet we call death inane,
while all along it’s LIFE, that great nemesis
that beats death by its inanity.