Sydney Guida
7AM
A yawn, a stretch of flesh over ribs, Grandma tips onto her sore feet, bumbles into her slippers, and combs her hair. It is short, dense, and like white straw from years of hairspray.
Her arms move like unoiled pistons, joints halting, skin loose; the same, muscle-less skin she whined to you about when you visited the month before last, when she hated the way she looked in that dress she wore to the baby shower, because her upper arms were too flabby.
9AM
Grandma calls you. You do not answer.
There is an ocean full of voicemails for you she harbors, but when she remembers that you do not have an inbox set up, she presses the landline down and stores another conversation inside.
She is sick. She does not have the heart to tell you that she is sick.
10AM
Grandma is hungry and finds that the poltergeist which haunts her house has stolen loaves of bread from the pantry and carrots from the fridge and the breath from her gut and she is not getting old and she is not forgetting these things and she washes her hands thirteen times.
She breathes. She has forgotten she ate those things again. It is okay; she will run to the store at noon.
12PM
Grandma forgets to run to the store, and is instead living in 1970.
She hurries around the tiny house, built from mortared brick and fruit wallpaper and quiet, shuttering gossamers, her hips swift with newfound spright, and stops herself in front of the set dining table, which is haunted by cold silverware, when she forgets she has no mouths to feed.
She breathes. It is okay.
2PM
Grandma sags into her threadbare recliner, she sits at the stillness,
And she stares at the walls.
There are images of pear baskets, of a robed Jesus Christ, of her six children. She mutters some Polish to herself so she will remember what her mother sang.
3PM
Grandma calls you, with things she wants to tell you. Her mind is so empty, but she holds conversations with you close, in a box, in her head. You do not pick up. Another one to the box.
She is sick, and her wrinkled face stings, and it hurts to cry. There is something swollen always. There is something aching always. What did she want to tell you again? A good-hearted antidote about getting old?
Yes, it was this. She remembers this.
7PM
Grandma forgets to eat.
8PM
Grandma remembers the poltergeist and starts and then remembers that the poltergeist is her. That she is alone. She will lose this tomorrow, surely.
9PM
Grandma forgets to sleep. She is busy staring at her walls.
10PM
Grandma forgets what it is like to be old, but she remembers what it is like to be a baby. She rocks these thoughts in a mind-bassinet: A round belly, fat with childhood; a guttural cry, with no ears to listen; a want, a desperate want—to walk, to speak, for a toy or a mother to play with.
She feels in herself this baby and she wails.
12AM
Ja cię kocham. Daj mi buziaka.
Grandma forgets you are in bed. She calls you, so she can tell you what she remembers before she forgets to.
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Sydney Guida is a 16-year-old high school student from Pennsylvania.
Diamond Gazette 