DNR

My grandmother's shell
lays in the hospital bed
no longer combative
or tethered to the rails.
Her face is unfamiliar
with its new slouch created
by a lack of dentures
to match an absence of mind
and the fresh dose of sedatives
coursing through her tender veins.
The sterile stage is set, but the
lights won't dim to curtains.
She's propped up carefully
like a ventriloquist's dummy
sitting on the lap of Death.
Cruelly, He won't take her yet.
To us she died years back
but He prolongs His performance
for reasons unbeknownst.

"Mira, que bonita," she says
in an innocently excited tone
reminiscent of a five-year-old
at Christmas, her gnarled right hand
fingering the purple bracelet strapped
to her left wrist. If she knew what
its three letters meant
she'd find it even prettier--
a ticket out of this pointless encore.
"Si," I quietly agree in the
second language she taught me
when I was growing differently
than I am at twenty-eight.
Love, the first, yearns for a merciful
last show by the Silent Entertainer.

We lock eyes through her cataracts
and smile for very different reasons;
or maybe, in retrospect, our thinking
was the same.