Grandpa

When will I vitamin c you again?
You’re melting;
I want to tell you in my sporadically sublet mind 
you occupy a room. 
Some cardboard box with your name on it 
In marker with a smiley face
at least

You left with sirens
the big wooden box crushing cardboard
picking from it
piles
pages 
a flurried reshuffling to make room 
then thud

I’ll hand it to you,
not a foot of this place was devoid of you
Though I didn’t meet your eyelid
I didn’t have to
You left
And I
regretted summons never answered;
I may have dreamed them up

A fourth of me is yours, scattered 
and muddled with thirds and seconds
but then you were total
Then corners were swept up, leases reorganized
The toy car digging furiously into the last bumped wall, picked up, righted
Look at you now, a vitamin capsuled in a sour memory
Tap, 1, 2, from your giant palm to mine
Once a day, making craters in my tongue
But I know you’ll go
The lunar cycle of a disappearing pill

Shalini Corea is from Sri Lanka, but currently based in the UAE. She performs in productions, devises/makes theater, writes plays, and writes poetry. She is also involved in policy-based research, with a specific interest in Sri Lanka. Corea’s key subject areas of interest are politics, conflict, gender, and intimacy.