Grandma

Grandma has an amazing body
Round and soft and full of strength
and stories
I want to look at my body the way I look at hers

Round belly carried six babies
and birthed four
Breasts large and low...

More?

Deep veins
purple and beautiful blue across her lap
making maps
of thirty hour plane rides, week long whitewater rafting trips, and 80 years of standing,
sitting, swimming, stretching, walking, waiting

Big veins

Beautiful

A sea
of blue and red travel down her knee
ahead of spots brown as brick
and thick
from summers in the sun
and pushing one by one
grandchildren in strollers
from Denver to Columbus
to Cincinnati to Philadelphia,
Cleveland, Chicago, Washington D.C.

I wish I could look at me and see the way she seems to be

Grandma

Wrinkles in her face, the way she smiles
all the while cooking, cleaning, volunteering
laughing, light and cheery, with teary eyes
about the past
Pulling fast the bedsheets and shoe strings
and the wedding ring she wears
25 years after being widowed

Dimpled flesh
soft and pimpled
fresh
and clean
old and rough worn
hard, torn
spotted brown
wrinkled down
but never out

On me it just looks like cellulite.

I wish I could see more
of Grandma