An extempore tragedy
Grandmother’s
arthritic
fingers tear the moquette on her armchair.
Framed by fading light the holland blind holds
condensate
from potatoes
eroded by the water they boil in. Mouse-turd
caulks the floorboards she creaks over
to the
stove to remove
the dinner I’d sooner miss. Be a good boy
and eat up. You do love me, don’t you?
So I
swallow my words.
Now we have
inherited
the haunting house…it takes possession.
The gaudy wallpaper’s arabesques suggest
an
Edwardian audience
at home with melodrama. From her portrait
Grandmother directs an extempore tragedy
we move to
stop
yet enact as our shadows close together—
confidants or combatants? We both hope
the next
scene is final.
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