ESTHER SUN Poetry | Los Gatos High School, Los Gatos, CA
My grandfather dies on my last night in Iowa and though I spent the summer learning to write poems so I can write that these hours feel like a pot of tea burning too long on the stove — it still doesn’t feel like mercy. On the plane I dream we all go out to dinner one last time. Noodles and red bean soup for dessert. My uncles talking about job markets, my brother with earbuds in, my grandfather listening quietly. When we return to his house the new wife steps inside but my grandfather stands in the dark on the sidewalk, July lying in petals at his feet, watching our car pull away and sink into the road’s quiet current. Each time we left I wondered if it would be the last time I saw him. Each time I burned the sight of him into memory: one arm behind his back, the other raised in a wave — memory not as in remember, but memorize. As it turns out, I can’t remember which dinner was the last or if it was dinner at all — I can only see his silhouette, dim windows at his back, the minutes stepping over themselves like piano notes, the night rippling around him.
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