It happened in winter, this

Sacrifice of yours

More silent than the barren earth

More still than the frigid rivers

Your pain

Sealed, drowned, suffocated

Under an ice-cold oxygen mask

Strain with your ears, grandma

Above the unyielding murk

Can you hear the wind

Snapping through branches

Leaving broken limbs behind?

Tattered leaves flurrying

Like dry crackles of a flame

Gnawing hopelessly at

Your last tinder

Heat from the fire

Licking

Sucking

Parching your veins of blood

Hospital room stuffed full

Sighs, sorrows, suffering

Bedridden bodies

Hoping for spring

In a place where spring never comes

Always

Was the meaning of your name

Yet you were trapped in a room

Disinfected of always

And plagued

By NEVER

You were sacrificed, grandma

Dust thrust into the air

Heat trickling from

Ashes

I thought your fingers would always

Make flowers bloom under a needle

I thought you

Would always stitch me together

The way grass mends cracked earth

After a frugal winter

Strain with your ears, grandma

Above the unyielding murk

Can you hear the wind

Caressing the branches

Leaving buds behind?

Spring is here, grandma

But you stayed frozen under snowy sheets

Lips still purpled with the frosted kiss

Of an ever-lasting winter