varies according to light cast by her television.
Eight years old, I loll on the floor in Wheel of Fortune’s
rainbow glow. Husbands and wives let off steam
on Days of Our Lives while Laverne and Shirley dodge rain
on their way down to the brewery. My grandmother
was raised on a farm: asparagus and peonies,
apple butter stewed in copper pots. She feeds me
ham sandwiches, sips black coffee in her reclining chair.
Fog rolls through each time she lights a cigarette.
We watch She-Ra in the three o’clock hour, laugh
when Lucy stomps her re-run grapes. By evening,
news anchors deliver storms: Berlin’s wall falling,
Cold War thawed. Beyond my grandmother’s house,
the valley wears its coat of mist or dew, and corn
condenses over humid soil. I take shelter inside
her living room, years before her skin turns pale
and cirrus, before her lungs rattle—not thunder
rolling closer but sunshine mobilizing to depart.